Blackburn spoil Newport FA Cup dream
Updated: Oct 13
Newport County 1 Blackburn Rovers 2
Byrne (30) Marshall (8, pen), Rhodes (75)
FACup 3rd Round
5,083 (Backburn 559)
Despite being full of cold and probably too ill to travel, this was too good an opportunity to miss. Newport County's home 3rd round FA Cup tie with Blackburn Rovers had been postponed and had been rescheduled for Monday 18th January, partly thanks to Welsh language TV channel S4C now covering the game live. I was surprised I was even able to get a ticket, but in the end it was nowhere near sold out despite this being arguably the biggest FAC game for the Amber Army since they lost 2 - 0 at the old Roker Park, Sunderland, around 30 years ago. This wasn't the first time I'd been to a Newport home game either; back in 1978 I was at their old Somerton Park ground for an FA Cup 2nd round game with Worcester City (0-0, then City lost 1-2 in the replay). Somerton Park was a monster of a ground that included a greyhound track and speedway track, but it’s long since been demolished and is now the site of a housing estate.
So I drove into Shrewsbury, parked up in the station car park and paid my £4.80 for the 24-hour fee and then stepped aboard the 13:40 to Milford Haven calling at Newport and about a thousand other stations either side of the Welsh border. For £36 return, though it was a decent enough journey. Shortly after leaving Shrewsbury station we passed the Shrews' New Meadow Stadium, and then the next station was Church Stretton, whose "Magpies" junior football team were once regular opposition for my lads who played for Market Drayton Junior Tigers. In fact, the whole trip was full of memories; another stop was Hereford, and just before the station, over to my right I could see the floodlights and the top of the stands of Hereford United's Edgar Street ground where my first love, Worcester City, regularly played back in the old Southern League and for whom I saw the great John Charles play many times at the end of his career.
Arriving at the space-age-looking rail station at Newport (honestly, it is, all curved steel and glass), I first of all took the wrong exit and ended up in the car park with no obvious way out to the streets of Newport! Eventually, retracing my steps and going back through the station, I eventually exited correctly onto the Queensway Road and made my way straight to Rodney Parade in the hope of getting some photos in the daylight. There has been quite a lot of development in and around the city centre in recent years, and it looks every bit the third largest city in Wales after Cardiff and Swansea. I walked over the impressive-looking Newport City Footbridge, which spans the River Usk and links the East bank near Rodney Parade stadium to the University Plaza on the West bank. As for photographs, the only one I have is the one shown below, of the main gateway. The rest of the stadium is protected by a high black corrugated fence or the rear walls of the stands, and you can see very little of the inside of the ground. A lot of construction work is still going on all around the ground, but it was hard to tell exactly what they are building!
I made my way back into town to meet up with @PCOX74, a Leeds fan born and bred in Newport. We enjoyed a chat and a couple of beers at the Queens Hotel Wetherspoon on Bridge Street before heading to the game. I didn’t tell Coxy at the time, but I‘d been in there since about 4 pm and had already worked my way through a fair few pints of Abbot Ale and one of Spoons’ gourmet burgers!
Although the ground would be nowhere near full, everyone seemed to have arrived at the last minute, and we had quite a queue to get into the Hazell Stand, not helped by the bloke in front of me not understanding that the bar code reader needed to see the bar code end of the ticket, not the blank end! I guess it was the first visit of the season for many, not just me.
Rodney Parade is a strange-looking stadium. It is primarily a rugby ground, of course, with both Gwent Dragons and Newport Rugby playing there, so the pitch was threadbare. To our right, as we sat at the front of the Hazell Stand, were the travelling Rovers fans on a small open terrace that ran only partway across that end of the ground. The players entered the field from the corner nearest us on our right, and emerged from a building not dissimilar to that strange little “house” in the corner of Portman Road, Ipswich. The opposite end was also a completely open terrace of what looked to be ten or twelve steps. The Bisley Stand opposite us is quite new, shiny even, and dates from 2011. It has rows of seats below a flat wall of hospitality boxes, and the multi-coloured seats give a sort of checkerboard effect. The TV gantry was also up at the top over the halfway line. Finally, the Hazell stand, where we sat, is a traditional structure with terracing to the front and several rows of seating to the rear. Annoyingly, some very thick posts supporting the roof do get in your eye line.
The game got off to a cracking start with referee Charles Breakspear giving Rovers a very soft penalty after just 8 minutes when Ben Marshall was adjudged to have been pushed by Scott Barrow. Marshall fired the penalty home without drama. Everyone thought it would be an uphill struggle for the Ambers, but within 2 minutes a wild tackle by Rovers' Chris Brown on Medy Elito sent the Blackburn man off, though the unfortunate Elito was also carried off! Game on!
Half an hour in, Newport's Mark Byrne brought everyone to their feet with a magnificent 25-yard strike that curled into the top corner at the far end of the ground, our left. 1 - 1 at half-time, and the only bad news, apart from the huge queues for the bogs, was that Jordan Rhodes was stripped and ready to come on for the second half. Having seen him regularly score against Leeds, I feared for the home side.
Sure enough, with 75 minutes on the clock, Rhodes rose majestically to head home and confirm Rovers' place in round 4. Newport had one glorious chance in the 80th minute, but with the entire goal to aim at, Scott Boden headed well over the bar; shame.
And that was ground number 89, just 3 to go now, and I am starting to feel disappointed that this mammoth project is coming to an end. With my thanks to Coxy for sharing this one with me, I now look forward to Crawley, Wimbledon and Southend to complete the set.
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