Boro beaten at Newport

A second half strike from Craig Reid gave Newport County a 1-0 victory in Boro’s latest pre-season friendly. It sounds like it was a very competitive game in South Wales, a game that Boro failed to get to grips with. Graham Westley named a strong side in his usual 4-3-3 formation. Chris Beardsley was joined up front by Yemi and Griffin while John Mousinho started in midfield alongside Joel Byrom and Stacy Long. Newport also named a first choice XI, which included former Boro defender Eddie Odhiambo.

It seems that Newport treated it like any other game and were out there to try and win. They have had a good pre-season, winning 7 of their 8 matches so far, drawing the other one against Port Talbot Town. They smashed their league last season to win promotion to the Conference and are obviously a very competitive side that don’t like to lose.

I think our official site may have been a bit harsh calling the Welsh side over committed, aggressive and fractious. I don’t think there is anything wrong in being committed, even if it was only a friendly. However, it sounds like Holdsworth’s side went a bit over the top, which if true, is probably not what Westley wanted a week before the new season.

Of course the Newport forum are reporting that none of the above actually happened and that it is all bollocks. Some have said that it was a game of “footballers versus lumpers and the footballers won!” I don’t think a team with Robbie Matthews up front can be considered as a good ‘footballing’ team, but it’s not the first time an opposition team has given us the label of ‘lumpers’. I don’t see that to be honest. Yes, we’re strong physically, but we have some very good footballers in this squad and although we can use the direct approach at times, we can also play some good football.

Today’s defeat maybe not the ideal preparation ahead of next week’s League 2 opener against Macclesfield, but it won’t have hurt the team to be brought down a peg or two. If we had gone through pre-season unbeaten, then over-confidence may have creeped in to the squad and we could have been caught off guard against Macclesfield. Hopefully now we will go into next week with full focus and be ready for what could be a tough game. Our opponents next week finished off their pre-season today with a 1-0 win over Rhyl.

Boro have a chance to get back to winning ways on Monday night with a game at Hitchin. I’m still not quite sure what team will play at Topfield, but I’m sure there will be some players in attendance with a point to prove. It will be Boro’s last game against a non-league side for quite a while, unless we draw one in the FA Cup 1st round. Then the real stuff starts in less than a week.