Newport County boss relieved to claim last-gasp draw with Stevenage

An injury-hit County team trailed 1-0 after a mistake from Josh Sheehan gifted the lowly visitors a 12th-minute lead at Rodney Parade.

And it looked as if they would suffer a fifth successive defeat in League Two before Matt headed in from George Nurse’s cross in the second minute of time added on.

“We gave them a goal and we should have won the game,” said Flynn afterwards.

“We’ve stopped the rot of losing in the league and the players showed that they keep going.

“That was the least that deserved and I’m really made up for them because we’ve got so many injuries.

“And we’ve had more today; Matty Dolan has a chest infection and he probably shouldn’t have played, Danny McNamara has got a bad groin and Mark O’Brien had to come off because he was being sick after a head injury.

“But we kept going and I’m delighted for them.”

Flynn felt his side put in a better performance than they had in their last home game – a 1-0 defeat to Oldham Athletic on November 23.

“I thought we played a lot better than we did against Oldham and the boys showed their character to come back and not lose the game,” said the Exiles boss.

“A couple of them played really well. I thought Taylor Maloney was very good, Lewis Collins when he came on tried to be positive and George Nurse put a great cross in [for Matt’s equaliser].

“Taylor went through early on but he didn’t hit the target. If he’d scored that it would have been a different game.

“And I don’t think Nick [Townsend, County goalkeeper] had a save to make in the second half.

“We could have gone on and won it at the end but, unfortunately, we gave a poor goal away [early on].”

Flynn’s men remain 12th in the table, six points behind seventh-placed Northampton Town with two games in hand.

They go to bottom club Morecambe next Saturday.

Read more: Newport County 1 Stevenage 1 - match report from Rodney Parade