On a weekend which saw five of the 12 JD Cymru Premier teams knocked out of the JD Welsh Cup, Haverfordwest County AFC manager Tony Pennock was relieved to see his team advance to the third round with a penalty shoot-out victory over Trethomas Bluebirds.
The JD Cymru South leaders provided a stern test for the Town, who lost captain Dylan Rees to a red card in the second half.
Goalkeeper Ifan Knott needed to be at his best to make some important saves late on, before coming up with the decisive moment in the shoot-out as he saved from Kallum Thomas with all five County takers successful from 12 yards to secure safe passage into the third round.
Haverfordwest County are now unbeaten in their last seven outings, ahead of next Saturday’s meeting with Caernarfon Town in front of the live Sgorio cameras at LHP Stadium.
Here’s what the manager had to say in full after the game:
On the game
We knew it would be tough, and our standards dropped a bit today which, I suppose in hindsight, the boys have been doing so well, they can have an off day now and then. However, we kept a clean sheet and we scraped through on penalties, but we have to give Trethomas credit, I thought they worked extremely hard.
When we went down to 10 men, they had opportunities and caused us more problems, but with a few other teams out of the competition already from our league, we count ourselves lucky today.
On Trethomas
It was always going to be an extra incentive for them because they beat us two years ago as well, so they came here believing in themselves, which you can see they’ve got a lot of self belief because they’re a team that have won a lot of games and had a number of promotions over the last few years.
But all we can do is be at our best and we weren’t today in so many aspects of the game. But give the boys credit as well. Down to 10 men, we kept going and tried to win the game with 10 men, and unfortunately we just couldn’t get that first goal. But we still kept a clean sheet, and we’ll take the win and move into the next round.
On our response with 10 men
I didn’t want to just hang on to a nil nil and try and get to penalties, there’s no point in doing that. I still believed that we were good enough to win the game. But to do that you have to show your quality with the ball and work hard without it, and at times today we certainly didn’t show enough quality. Before going down to 10 men I thought there was opportunities for us to work harder without the ball. Football is a game that brings you back down to earth with a bump, but fortunately today we came out the other side with the win on penalties. We know going into next weekend against a tough Caernarfon side that we have to be better than we were today.
On Ifan’s performance
It’s tough when you’ve been sat on the bench for a long time to then come in and everybody expects you to be bang at it. It’s not easy, no matter what you’re playing in, league game, cup game. When you haven’t been in that position for some time, then it’s not a position that you can just fall back into quickly. So yes, pleased for Ifan. He dealt with a number of balls coming in the box, which he always does. His distribution was good, he made a really good save really late on in the game to take us to penalties, and then, as with Zac, we know Ifan has got a penalty save in him. He’s done it before, and he did it again today, he made one crucial save and the five penalty takers took care of the rest.
On the next challenge
We know Caernarfon are a very good side. They go away to TNS and win, and since then they’ve had a couple of poor results. But you’re only as good as your last game, and our next game has to be better than today. We’ll work hard this week and try and put a few things right. One or two couldn’t play today because they were having niggles, but the important thing is we get as many back playing next Saturday as we can, and be ready for the test against Caernarfon.
