Antony Sweeney pleased to see former teammate Dimi Konstantopoulos back in a Hartlepool United shirt following 3-0 win against Tow Law Town

A Niko Muir brace and close range strike from Jason Kennedy saw Pools run out as convincing winners at Victoria Park.

It was also the first time Pools had kept a clean sheet in six matches as goalkeeper Dimi Konstantopoulos finally made his return after training with the club since the summer.

He has agreed non-contract terms and will be eligible to play in any competitive first team match while at the club.

And the United legend rolled back the years with a fine save and an all round assured display with his former teammate Sweeney pleased to see the Greek goalkeeper in action once again.

“It’s good to see Dimi back playing at the stadium for Hartlepool,” admitted the 36-year-old.

“He had his 41st birthday last week but he pulled off a really good save for us in the second half that helped us get the clean sheet.

“It’s clean sheets and wins that you want to get into the habit of.

“The club needs that sort of winning mentality from top to bottom, you don’t get sick of winning games and we can argue about the performance but we’re into the next round and with that comes another opportunity.”

Hartlepool were rarely troubled all evening as the result never looked in doubt once Muir gave the home side the lead from the penalty spot inside the opening quarter hour.

But Sweeney wasn’t satisfied with the standard of the team’s performance, pointing to the unfamiliar mixture of players as a potential reason for the disjointed nature of the display.

“I’ve seen better games and in terms of the performance we know we can play a lot better than we did,” he added.

“I can be difficult in games like this because we’ve got a mismatch in teams where young lads are scattered in with some of the pros so you generally don’t have those players work together that often so patterns of play can fall down a little bit but the result is the main thing I suppose.”