TNS looking to bounce back from first defeat of the season
The New Saints play their first game since their long unbeaten league record came to an end when they face Newtown at Park Hall tomorrow (2.30pm).
Having won 19 and drawn three of their 22 league fixtures in the first phase of the JD Cymru Premier season, Saints lost 3-2 at Cardiff Metropolitan University last weekend.
Saints led 2-0 inside the opening 12 minutes, but the hosts, now up to third place in the table, hit back in style to claim maximum points.
Craig Harrison’s side still remain well clear as table-toppers, with TNS 15 points above second-placed Connah’s Quay Nomads with nine league games remaining.
Reflecting on last weekend, head coach Harrison said he was “still disappointed” – but stressed “we’ve just got to get on with it.”
Harrison said: “We’ve looked back at the game and there’s certain things we didn’t do that we’ve been doing all season that we didn’t do for whatever reason, and that was the contributing factor of not winning the football game.
“We obviously go 2-0 up and you expect a TNS team of our calibre to at least not get beat off anybody, and credit to Cardiff Met.
“We had a really, really poor six or seven minutes when they scored the two (second half) goals, because apart from that they only really had one opportunity right at the end when we were pushing everyone forward to try and get the equaliser.
“We’ve looked at the game straight afterwards, got the opportunity to look at it on Saturday night when I got home, spent a bit more time on it on Sunday and went through it, and clipped some good examples of what we didn’t do, how we’d done in other games, and I think it was pretty clear.
“Presented it to the players and the players were all in agreement and completely understood that we need to do them if we’re going to win football games.
“Things that are built on from the last 10, 12, 15 weeks that we’ve done 99 per cent of the time most games, most times.”
Newtown, tomorrow’s visitors to Oswestry, are currently sixth in the table.
It will be the third time the sides have met at Park Hall this season, with Saints winning 4-1 in the league last September and 7-0 in the JD Welsh Cup last month.
