Haverfordwest County AFC’s Kyle McCarthy says the team need to learn from the defeat to Flint Town United yesterday and focus on building momentum again, ahead of what is a busy period for the Bluebirds.

County went down 1-0 to the Silkmen at Essity Stadium, with Ben Hughes’ goal early in the second half proving decisive.

On a different day, the Town could have returned to west Wales with at least a point, however they were left to rue not making the most of a positive first-half display.

McCarthy joined the club late on in the summer transfer window but has already had a big impact on the team, with his experience and calm approach proving to be a real benefit as we search for a first top six finish in the JD Cymru Premier.

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

On the result

Really disappointing if I’m honest with you. I think we came up here with some hope and ambition to kick on again and almost build momentum, or rebuild momentum off the back of the loss last week. We had every intention to do our best and get a positive result, but unfortunately that wasn’t to be today.

I think Flint, in fairness to them, took their chance really well and you’ve got to give them credit in that sense. But from our side, I think in the context of what we’re trying to do and rebuild the momentum and kick it back up the table again, it’s disappointing overall, but we’ll have to try and kick on again now. It’s a busy two weeks.

On the first-half performance

I think you can look at it two ways. You can either give credit to Flint for making it that way and making a bit of a wrestle, or you can look at it from our side and it’s probably a slow start as well. But like I said, credit to them, they made it that way. We should have dealt better with it and managed that period better. And then we started to grow into the game and get a bit more control, but just couldn’t find that clear-cut chance throughout the first half. It almost fed into the second half as well then.

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On bouncing back

If we looked at the start of the season and looked at the points that we’ve picked up against the teams that we’ve played, you’d say it’s a relatively good start, but we just want to maintain that that momentum. Games like today are a bit of a hit, but at the same time it’s over to the next game that we can kick back on with, and I think we need to learn pretty quickly from today and, like I said, build momentum again, get some some rhythm into our play again, and then there’s opportunities to progress and pick up points very quickly.

On bedding into the group

It’s been brilliant, absolutely brilliant. It’s refreshing, it’s new, and the boys have been fantastic in terms of helping me settle in. It’s nice to come in and build those relationships, but almost see that transfer then onto the pitch, which I hope is the case, just hopefully now that kicks on and we can put our best foot forward and build momentum again now.

On the defensive displays so far

Ideally it would be zero goals conceded. But at the same time, I think coming in and playing alongside whether it’s Luke, whether it’s Jenks, or Al who’s coming in, Wattsy, I think it’s a strong line up and it also shows the depth of the squad that we’ve got as well. I think there’s areas that we can be better in and we want to be better in, we just need to kick on now and put that into practice.