Pompey kicked off their pre-season campaign with a win over Havant & Waterlooville courtesy of four second half goals at Westleigh Park.
A fairly strong first half side showcasing new signings David Norris, Jason Pearce and Luke Varney as well as the returning Greg Halford could not break down a Hawks side that had goalkeeper Nathan Ashmore to thank for keeping the scores level, though the hosts did threaten on occasion.
The second half saw Stephen Henderson replace Jamie Ashdown in goal whilst, interestingly, Tal Ben-Haim made an appearance which suggests that he is in Steve Cotterill's plans for the upcoming campaign. Hermann Hreidarsson also participated but was withdrawn later in the half.
Pompey should have taken the lead when Varney did well to cross the ball to young Australian Ryan Williams who miscued his volley with the goal at his mercy.
However, the deadlock was broken on the hour mark after Hayden Mullins found a newly beefed up Joel Ward in space in the box and teed him up for an easy strike.
Mullins soon doubled the lead after he lashed the ball into the top corner of the net from outside the box as Shaun Gale's men were beginning to tire.
Pompey's pressing saw Dave Kitson score the third goal after Ashmore had saved his initial effort and then Varney volleyed home a long ball that had caught out the Hawks' defence right at the death to seal a comfortable win.
You might expect the next friendly to be much tougher than this one, but at least there was no initial embarassing result for us to suffer.