Manager Tony Pennock was left frustrated by how yesterday’s game with The New Saints quickly got away from us, after a battling display had kept us in the contest for long periods.

The game was finely balanced when Lee Jenkins’ header made it 2-1 with just over 20 minutes remaining, with the Bluebirds confident of finding a second goal, however a nine-minute hat-trick from substitute Ryan Brobbel took the game away from the Bluebirds.

County will have to dust themselves down in time for next Saturday’s meeting with second place Connah’s Quay Nomads at the Ogi Bridge Meadow, with Pennock keen to see his team perform for longer periods in matches.

On the result…

I feel for the boys in periods because going in 1-0 at half-time to a goal that I thought we could have got the free-kick for – the fourth official said it was a free-kick – but we played on and it ends up in the back of our net. We improved as the first half went on to be fair, but after talking about things in the dressing room, we came out and did the total opposite. That’s frustrating. We gave them the second goal. If you give TNS two goals, it’s tough to get back into the game. And in fairness, the same as we did last year, we got back into the game at 2-1 and had a really good spell of 15 minutes or so where we looked ourselves, passed the ball well, our movement was good, our desire was good, and then we just give away another free-kick and it’s in the back of our net. 3-1, the game’s nearly over, and then we just look for people to be leaders on the pitch and to realise the situation of the game, but to go 3, 4, 5 then, that’s a bit disappointing.

On the third goal…

The third goal, all the goals are disappointing. Any time you concede, there’s normally a reason, but it doesn’t matter if we’re playing against TNS or anybody else in the league, we can’t just have 15 minutes of ourselves in games, which we’ve had too often this year, we need longer periods of that. Like I said, it’s disappointing because the boys trained really well. This week’s training is probably the best we’ve had in a number of weeks, we worked extremely well, the quality was excellent. We looked like we had a good training week when we got back into the game at 2-1, and we were in the game, but then our heads just dropped after the third goal and there was no coming back from that.

The performance compared to last weekend..

I was a lot more positive today than last week. A lot more. I know we are playing against the best team in the league, but we’ve still conceded five goals. We all have to look at ourselves, I said that last week. I just know that we have to be better in both boxes. We know that, but in terms of work rate I think the boys worked really hard today, which you’re going to have to do against TNS because they have so much of the ball. But we need to defend our goal a lot better than we are at the moment.

On next Saturday’s game with Connah’s Quay Nomads…

They’re all tough tests. irrespective of who we play against. And I’ll say, and I’ll keep saying it again, if we don’t do the basics well, it doesn’t matter who you play, it’s going to be tough.