Haverfordwest: The adventures of a part-time club in Europe

It is nearly 5am. Sunrise is coming and so is the long journey home from Skopje, the North Macedonian capital. The team bus will be outside the hotel in a few short hours and, for the players and staff of Haverfordwest County, it has been emotional. Occasions like these do not come along too often.

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The Welsh minnows have just played the first leg of their Europa Conference League qualifier against KF Shkendija, a team whose opponents in recent seasons have included Milan and Tottenham Hotspur. A narrow 1-0 defeat has kept the two-legged contest alive and, with the pressure off, nobody in the Haverfordwest camp will be getting much sleep. In a conference room at the team hotel, the music blasts out and the beer bottles stack up through the early hours.

“Imagine what it would have been like if we’d won,” says Tony Pennock, the manager who has taken a part-time team, including teachers, students, a roofer and a joiner, into Europe.

And, a week on, we find out for real.

The players are belting out their unofficial team anthem, Jamie Webster’s “Weekend in Paradise”, so loudly it feels like the dressing-rooms floor is vibrating. They are dancing, hugging, spraying drinks, trying to take in a night of exquisite drama and football’s uncommon ability to produce exhilarating highs. The only way to describe it is bedlam.

Haverfordwest have had to play the return leg at Cardiff City’s stadium because UEFA have decreed their own stadium is not up to it.

Final score: Haverfordwest 1, Shkendija 0 after extra time (Haverfordwest win 3-2 on penalties).

It is, without exaggeration, the biggest event in the club’s 124-year history. Grown men are crying tears of joy.

Haverfordwest had not played in Europe since 2004 and The Athletic