Haverfordwest County manager Tony Pennock says his team simply didn’t do the basics well enough as the Bluebirds suffered a 3-2 defeat to Briton Ferry Llansawel at the Ogi Bridge Meadow on Tuesday evening.

The Reds led 3-0 at the break thanks to goals from Ollie Anderson, Tom Walters and Alex Gammond, with the Town producing a disappointing first-half display in front of the highest top-flight attendance of the night (516).

Pennock’s men battled back admirably in the second half, with Ben Ahmun netting his 13th goal of the season before Academy player Hari Thomas scored his first senior goal for the club in added time, but it proved to be in vain as the Bluebirds ended Phase One with defeat.

Here’s what the manager had to say in full after the game:

On the game

The first half was a disaster, as bad as we’ve been since the Barry game, the worst two performances of the season. Barry was for 90 minutes, today was for the first half, the second half was a lot better, but at 3-0 down you’ve got a mountain to climb and unfortunately we didn’t have enough second half to get anything out the game.

On the goals we conceded

You can look at every goal and there’s at least two mistakes in every one of the three goals that Briton Ferry have scored. Still, the first one’s a fantastic finish, the second one’s a great finish as well, and then a set-piece, a free header from a corner for the third. But even the corner we’ve given away ourselves. We’ve given them a big hand in the goals they’ve scored, but I’ve got to be fair to Briton Ferry, first half they pressed us all over the pitch and they deserved to be where they were first half. Second half, we came out and we knew that if we could get a goal back things might change, but even then we made bad decisions and weren’t good enough to get the extra goals to break them down.

I probably sound like a broken record when I talk about doing the basics and doing them well, but first half we did nothing well. We caught them in possession a couple of times in the first five or 10 minutes, and we didn’t even get a shot off on those opportunities. Before we knew it it’s gone bang, bang and we’re 2-0 down then obviously the third goal later on.

On Will Hughes and Hari Thomas’ performances

When any of the Development boys get an opportunity, more often than not they really shine and the both of them are the big positives from tonight’s game, and I’m really pleased for both of them. Hari had little bits of time with us earlier in the season, not so much lately, but he’s taken his opportunity tonight. Ashley Watkins was ill, so Hari has come on the bench, and Will has performed really well for us whenever he’s had the opportunity. He trains with us quite a lot, he’s got plenty of good attributes and hopefully we’ll see them in a blue shirt for many years to come.

On the challenge in Phase Two

It’s going to be tough, I know that. That’s the lowest points tally we’ve had in Phase One since I’ve been at the club, which is disappointing. We’ll look at that and reflect on that and look at where we’ve gone wrong. Lots of people will have their own thoughts on that, but we can’t hide from the fact that we haven’t been good enough at the start – we’ve been good lately, which was why our first-half performance was a big shock – but that’s the way we are. Unfortunately we haven’t performed tonight, so we know that we’ve got 10 really big games left because it’s not about finishing seventh, it’s about first and foremost staying in the league, and there’s a lot of teams in the bottom six that are capable of beating anybody on their day. Everybody’s shown that this season and we know that we’re going to have to be a lot better than we were tonight in the remaining 10 games.

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