Padraig Amond believes it was important that Newport County AFC continued their momentum on their League Two return as they moved up to third in the table with a 2-1 victory over Scunthorpe.
With the Cheltenham Town fixture postponed last weekend due to County receiving three international call-ups, it was important for the Exiles to return with aplomb and keep the feelgood factor going which has been built in the opening batch of 12 league fixtures.
The Irishman opened the scoring at Rodney Parade in first half stoppage time then got the assist for Josh Sheehan’s stunning matchwinner, obtaining the man-of-the-match award following another imperious performance.
Here, you can read what Amond exclusively told iFollow Exiles following the conclusion of the game…
On the victory over Scunthorpe United…
"It’s a big win for us. Scunthorpe are going to be a decent side this year, they’ve started to get going in the past few weeks and got some really good players.
"They’ve got a very good manager and assistant manager [Paul Hurst and Chris Doig] who I’ve worked with before, so I know how they play, and they want to do things the right way and they’ll be decent this season when they get going again.
"It’s an important three points for us, not having a game last weekend made it important that we hit the ground running coming back into the league.
"It was important that we got a result, being at home as well was important because we’ve made Rodney Parade a fortress recently and we needed to keep that going.
"The results have put us into third with a game in hand so we’re in a really good position."
On Josh Sheehan’s matchwinner…
"We don’t want to say this too loud, but Josh Sheehan has probably been the best player in the league so far. That’s massive credit to him because he’s reinvented himself as a different type of midfielder to what the County fans are used to seeing.
"He was more of a number 10 but now he’s dropped deeper and is an all-round midfielder. We see his quality day in day out in training, now it’s transpiring onto the pitch week in week out.
"At the minute, he’s the best player in the league. It’s great to have him on our side and the goal he scored was unbelievable. Again we see him do that in training so it wasn’t a surprise for us.
"The only surprise was that it took him this long to score a goal like that. He’s been brilliant, credit to him, and hopefully he can keep those performances up.
"It’s a goal that deserved to win any game."
On facing Crawley Town on Tuesday…
"It’s a good test for us again. It’s important that we have a really good turnout again because the difference the fans make is massive. The noise they made after the second goal spurred us on and helped us get the victory.
"Every game in this league is tough, regardless of whether you’re playing first in the league or 24th in the league – it’s always going to be a tough game.
"It’s just about trying to put a string of wins together and try to keep the run going – that’s what we’ve done since losing at Northampton, we’ve started a mini-run again and hopefully it’ll keep going for a long time.
"Tuesday night is really important for us and if we can get the victory, it’ll be really important for us.
"Both of us will fancy ourselves going into the game. They have a massive opportunity the following week to get into the quarter finals of the Carabao Cup so hopefully they’ll have one eye on that.
"We can’t think like that, we’ll be preparing to face the best Crawley team and we’ll be expecting a tough game. Hopefully we can get a victory to keep us going."
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