Northampton Town 2, Newport County 1
Newport County completed their pre-season fixtures with a heartening team performance at Sixfields Stadium.
The Exiles led at half-time thanks to a goal from substitute Lamar Reynolds before League One Northampton hit back to win.
Former Cardiff City striker Alex Revell led the home attack, but County, playing in a 3-5-2 formation, defended solidly.
“I’m not going to get too carried away and I wouldn’t have been too despondent if we’d lost convincingly,” said County manager Michael Flynn, whose team open their League Two season at Stevenage Borough next weekend.
“I was extremely happy with what I saw out there. We still conceded two goals and we have to cut those things out, but we were solid and we were the better team in large parts of the game.
“We should have scored more goals but I made a lot of changes.
“Two young boys came on, a couple of trialists and because I was happy with what I was seeing I was more concerned about injuries so I was preparing for next week.
“Robbie Willmott played in three different positions and was outstanding. He was on set-plays, he played up front, he played wing-back plus centre midfield and did well in every single one of them.
“I said he is a utility man and he’s proved that.
“Frank (Nouble) was a handful, Matty Dolan was brilliant, Labs (team captain Joss Labadie) was brilliant and Dan Butler very good. There were a lot of good performances.”
Flynn was delighted with his teams performance for well over an hour. County went ahead through Reynolds after 68 minutes before Northampton substitute Chris Long, with a solo goal, and Leon Barnet, from a close range header, scored to earn Town victory.
Former Newport manager Justin Edinburgh is in charge of Northampton’s team, while ex-County defender Regan Poole is playing for the Cobblers on a season-long loan from Manchester United.
Flynn included two trialists in his squad and one of those was former West Ham winger Zavon Hines.
, amongst a raft of changes and his side lost a bit of fluency and concentration as a result.
County: Day, Butler (trialist, Hines 66), Demetriou, Bennett (Reynolds 46), O’Brien (Foulston 72), Pipe (Turley 46), Labadie (Owen-Evans 72), Dolan (Barnum-Bobb 81), Rigg (Collins 84), Willmott, Nouble (Trialist 81)
Subs not used: Bittner, Press, Touray, Williams.
Referee: Darren England
Attendance: 1,346 (80 County).
