THE HIT PARADE
Dubliner Mark Byrne is part of a struggling Newport side hoping to cause a giant-killing
BY the River Usk, they haven’t been this excited about a Cup tie since John Aldridge and Tommy Tynan were strutting their stuff for Newport County in the Cup Winners’ Cup.
It is 35 years since the South Wales club marched to the quarter-finals of the UEFA competition, and 30 since they last figured in the third round of the FA Cup.
With so little Cup cheer, it’s no wonder that Rodney Parade will be rocking today when Dubliner Mark Byrne leads Newport County out for the visit of Blackburn Rovers, with a place in the last 32 at stake. It’s an improbable pairing. Twenty years ago, Blackburn were Premier League champions, while Newport were in league exile in the Southern League.
Today, they square up for a Cup tie as members of the Football League, separated by two just divisions, following Newport’s return to the League fold in 2013 after a 25-year absence.
For Byrne, the game is ‘a free shot’ for Newport to put on hold their struggle for survival as a League club.
‘It’s massive for the club. It would mean so much if we got through, especially for financial reasons,’ he said.
‘The pressure isn’t on us, as a League Two club. We can relax and have a go. The boys will be up for it. Being at home is a help, too. Blackburn started off well under Paul Lambert but they have had a little dip recently.’
Now in his second season at Newport, the 27-year-old midfielder survived the summer cull after the club’s EuroMillions-winning owner, Les Scadding, pulled out.
Terry Butcher had just been appointed manager amid much fanfare but instead of bringing players in and building for a promotion push, no less than 14 players were allowed leave.
Butcher didn’t last long either as he parted company on October 1, when the club were bottom of the league, to be succeeded by John Sheridan, the former republic of Ireland midfielder.
Byrne felt Butcher was a ‘good one-on-one manager.’ ‘I got on really well with him and was sorry that he left.’
Of Sheridan, he says, ‘he is straight to the point, very honest.’
A lower-league grafter, Byrne has played under a cluster of managers who all supped at football’s top table, among them Colin Calderwood, Justin Edinburgh, Edgar Davids, Butcher and Sheridan.
Of them all, Davids at Barnet was the most idiosyncratic.
‘He was different. The first day he came in, he said “Everyone call me Mister, not gaffer.” A bit like Zidane this week.
‘He always wore the number one jersey, as well as glasses.
‘His demos in training were very slick. But he insisted on playing and he must have been 40 then. In League Two you don’t get much space on the ball as he found out.’
Under the ‘gaffer’ Sheridan (below), Byrne provides cover for the back four, and links play from the back.
‘I’m not getting forward as much as I did last season. I’m sitting in behind and starting the play.’
A run of 10 games unbeaten under Sheridan included a second round FA Cup win away to Barnet, Byrne’s old stomping ground.
‘I enjoyed going back there and winning. I had a good time at Barnet but was happy to move on,’ he said.
The Dubliner played schoolboy football with Crumlin United and was capped at under-age level for Ireland by Seán McCaffrey.
He signed for Forest at 18 but only played twice before spells on loan in the Conference at Burton and Rushden & Diamonds, where he was the Players’ Player of the Year in 2009-10.
When his contract was up at Forest in the summer of 2011, Byrne signed for Barnet, where he chalked up 166 appearances. He has been at Newport since the summer of 2014.
‘I like the club and the people around it. When the owner left last summer, there was a lot of uncertainty as the budget was slashed and players let go.
‘Things looked uncertain and without the Supporters Trust, the club would have been in danger. There is little money for players and the main aim this season is to stay in the League,’ he said.
Byrne lives in Cardiff, a club with an Irish FA Cup connection as the last Irishman to lead his team in a FA Cup final played for Cardiff City, Stephen McPhail.
It is stretching things to imagine Newport County might march on Wembley, like their neighbours did in 2008, but a return to the fourth round, for the first time since 1979, would script another chapter in the Cup’s giant-killing lore.