Stowmarket Town boss Rick Andrews 'satisfied' with start to season after coming from behind to beat Hadleigh United 3-1 on Wednesday

Rick Andrews is satisfied with Stowmarket Town’s start to the season, but admits his newly-assembled squad still have more improvement to make.

Stow fought back from a goal behind to beat Hadleigh United 3-1 at the Millfield on Wednesday night, a result which propelled the Old Gold and Blacks up to second in the Thurlow Nunn League Premier Division table.

Two wins and a draw from their opening three league games, as well as a 6-0 thrashing of Clapton in the Emirates FA Cup at the weekend, has whetted the appetite for Stow supporters in the early weeks of the new campaign.

And with a rare free weekend ahead of them, before hosting Newmarket Town at Greens Meadow on Tuesday (7.45pm), Stow manager Andrews is keen to see his side continue to improve.

“We told the boys at half time on Wednesday, and spoke about it during pre season, that we expect a lot of the games to be competitive,” he said.

“Hadleigh set themselves up with the big man up top, and he scored a wonder goal to put them 1-0 up.

“We started to get a bit agitated, but we just told them at half time, the game is 90 minutes. It was great to get the second goal so early on in the second half, and I thought for the last 25 minutes we dominated.

“If it wasn’t for their goalkeeper making some outstanding saves, we could have won by even more, but overall I’m satisfied with how we’ve started the season.

“Hadleigh is a tricky place to go and Clacton isn’t the easiest of places to play at either, but we’ve took seven points from our first three games.

“It’s more or less a new side that we’ve got and they’re starting to get used to playing with each other.

“There’s still a long way to go, but I’m really happy that we’ve managed to get those points on the board straight away.

“We still haven’t had a complete performance yet, aside from maybe Brantham.

“The other games so far, we’ve been much stronger in the second half than the first half.”

On Wednesday night, Joel Glover’s fine free-kick gave Hadleigh a 15th-minute lead, before teenage midfielder George Quantrell pounced on Nick Punter spilling Seb Dunbar’s shot to equalise six minutes from the break.

Christy Finch fired Stow in front barely 30 seconds after the restart for his fourth goal of the season, and Dave Cowley lobbed Punter on 57 minutes to make it 3-1.

The last 15 minutes of the encounter saw the visitors pepper the Hadleigh goal with chances, as substitutes George and Anton Clarke were both denied by a resilient Punter, and twice Stow struck the Hadleigh crossbar.