Craig Harrison hails players as TNS stand on brink of European history
Craig Harrison hailed his players after The New Saints opened up an impressive lead at the halfway stage of their UEFA Conference League play-off round tie with Lithuanian champions FK Panevėžys.
Second-half goals from Danny Davies, Dan Wiliams and Ben Clark guided Saints to an excellent 3-0 win at the LFF Stadium in Vilnius on Thursday night.
After taking control of the tie, Saints will now look to complete the job in next Thursday’s second leg in Oswestry (6.30pm).
The Park Hall club are striving to make history by becoming the first JD Cymru Premier club to reach the league phase of a European competition.
But Harrison was quick to stress that it’s half time in the tie and the importance of Saints not taking anything for granted.
Head coach Harrison, speaking after his side’s fine victory, said: “The boys were fantastic today, so from that point of view it’s a massive performance.
"It’s a togetherness, a will to run, a will to tackle, the will to block, the will to head, all the real basics in football that people take for granted, and take for granted at this football club because we are an attacking, offensive, passing team, possession based.
“But all them things we got absolutely spot on tonight and the boys, every single one of them, the boys on the bench that didn’t get on, are delighted.
"The boys that were injured - we had two injuries the day before yesterday. Ryan Brobbel and Ash Baker got injured on match day minus one, so we’ve had that to deal with as well.
“Overall, it’s very proud, very happy, but it’s half time.
"We’ve got to make sure our emotions are in check. We’ve got to make sure that we don’t take anything for granted and, from a football point of view, we’ve got to make sure we do the right things between now and next week in possibly one of the biggest weeks of the club’s history.
“But we’ve got good professionals, good players, that will look after themselves, and I think, yes, it’s a great scoreline, a great away performance, some great goals.
“Everyone contributed massively, but we’ve got to make sure, like I said, it’s half time and we don’t want to get into the false sense of security and just think we’re going to turn up next Thursday and we’re going to win the game because we will not.
"You get bit on the backside quite quickly in football, so as much as we’re really pleased and the dressing room’s really buzzing and everyone’s happy for each other, and we’re all in it together, then we’ve got to have a reality check that we’ve got another 90 minutes this time next week.”
Defender Davies broke the deadlock seven minutes into the second half when he turned the ball home from close range after FK Panevėžys were unable to clear a corner.
Williams doubled the lead in style in the 64th minute, finding the bottom corner of the net after breaking into the box following an excellent run.
It got even better for Saints as the game moved into stoppage time as substitute Clark converted an inviting low cross to further extend the advantage.
