BRAINTREE Town manager Glen Driver was full of praise for his players after they got their Vanarama National League South season up and running in style.

The Iron ran out emphatic 3-0 winners at St Albans City on Tuesday to register their first win of the new campaign and their maiden victory under Driver.

Goals from Adam Mills, Femi Akinwande and Michael Clark helped Braintree end a run of three straight defeats and proved the perfect response to their hugely disappointing 4-0 home defeat at the hands of Wealdstone, last weekend.

Driver said: “I think the most pleasing thing was the reaction from what was such a poor performance on Saturday (against Wealdstone).

“I came out in the press and said we were close before that game but then put in a very poor performance which we all take responsibility for, not just the players.

“Fair play to my players – I think they were desperate to put in a performance (at St Albans).

“It was nice to get the monkey off our back with our first league win but the league is over 42 games and it’s a long season and a marathon not a sprint.

“We’re nowhere near the finished article and we’re not where I want us to be yet.

“We’re always looking to improve and I’m talking to a couple of potential new signings at the moment.”

Braintree went in at the break 2-0 up, thanks to goals from Mills and Akinwande, before Clark polished off the fine win late on.

“We should have had four or five in the game and we absolutely murdered St Albans in the first half,” said Driver.

“We played down the big slope in the first half and I felt that gave us the advantage – we really did cut them open at will at times.

“When we went in at half-time at 2-0, we felt the next goal was very important.

“We wanted to weather the storm and had to defend at times but in the last 15 minutes we had some counter-attacks.

Braintree are back at Cressing Road on Saturday when they host Eastbourne Borough in National League South and boss Driver is hoping they can build on their fine win at St Albans.

“Hopefully there’ll be a bounce about them in training heading into the Eastbourne game,” he added.

“The clean sheet will give everyone confidence, especially the goalkeeper, the centre-halves and midfielders.

“I want to give special praise to Tom Richardson – he was up there on his own against their centre-halves but he set the tone for us to go and get amongst them.”