Bring on City
League Two heroes stun Boro to earn dream tie with champions
Joe Day did not wait around to celebrate Newport going through to face Premier League champions Manchester City in what will probably be the biggest, and certainly the most lucrative, game in his club’s history.
Instead, the goalkeeper raced straight down the Rodney Parade tunnel, into a waiting car and to the hospital where his wife had just gone into labour with twins.
It was a dramatic end to a night of rich FA Cup fairy-tales, although, in truth, there was nothing whatsoever based in fantasyland concerning the League Two dreamers reaching the fifth round for the first time in 70 years.
Yes, it means this latest Cup run by the unfashionable Gwent club will be worth more than £1million and for an outfit that thought it was going out of business a few years ago that will, of course, take on a miraculous quality.
But the easiest way to sum up the emphatic nature of their victory over the fifth-placed team in the Championship is to report that Day barely had a save to make all evening. Indeed, he may have been assisting the midwives.
If Pep Guardiola was not watching then maybe that was advisable. In some respects this was a textbook giant-killing (not that woeful Middlesbrough should even warrant such status). The sodden pitch, the teeming rain, the rugby field...
Indeed, it was 70 years to the very day since Newport beat Hud- dersfield and joined the likes of Manchester United in those rarefied environs.
Since then, County’s history has been tumultuous, going out of business in the 1980s, before reforming and dragging their way back up from the ninth tier, a climb they are still battling to continue.
Mike Flynn’s heroes came in having one win in their last nine League games but on this formand with the Manchester United loanee Regan Poole and Robbie Willmott – who was stacking shelves in Tesco a few summers ago – making a mockery of their standing in the pyramid, nothing seems beyond them. In the hysteria, maybe not even Manchester City.
After all, Leicester City were made to look like the Rodney plonkers in the third round last month, and certainly Tony Pulis will testify to the uncompromising style of the challenge. Born in Newport, raised in Newport, played in Newport... just like his jubilant counterpart. It is fair to presume that Pulis has enjoyed happier homecomings. Without exaggeration, Newport might have had four or five in the first half. Granted, Jordan Hugill hit the post for the visitors, but this just a mere interlude in the siege of the Amber Army.
It was triggered by an injustice and then, it hardly paused for breath. Except, perhaps, to utter a few choice words concerning the referee in the eighth minute.
Somehow Stuart Atwell did not award the penalty when Poole crossed and Adam Clayton stuck out his hand to deflect the ball. If VAR was on-site it would have required the quickest of rewinds to award the spot-kick. Willmott and Poole were causing more problems than the conditions on the right. Padraig Amond should have hit the net with two crosses from Willmott, with Dimi Konstantopoulos sharply turning away the latter effort.
It took Willmott just two minutes after the restart to allow the crowd its corrugated roof-raising moment. A flick header from Amond, gave Willmott possession on the left of the area, and from there he curled the ball inside the near post.
In the 67th minute, Amond returned the favour by clinically and rather spectacularly volleying in a Willmott corner.
Middlesbrough were bogged down in their own mediocrity as well as the turf and unable to muster even the whiff a fightback. No doubt, they have greater ambitions in terms of promotion, but Pulis was left to exit his hometown knowing the old place is still a great disrespecter of reputation.
Newport County (4-3-2-1) Day; Poole, Demetriou, O’brien, Butler; Bennett, Labadie (Donal 74), Bakinson; Willmott (Pipe 86), Amond; Matt. Subs Marsh-brown, Sheehan, Hornby-forbes, Crofts, Townsend. Middlesbrough (3-5-2) Konstantopoulos; Ayala, Flint, Fry; Mcnair (Van La Parra, h-t), Friend, Wing, Howson, Clayton; Hugill (Gestede 57), Assombalonga (Fletcher 61). Subs Downing, Tavernier, Lonergan, Besic. Referee S Attwell (Warwickshire).