NEWPORT County AFC keeper Joe Day wants to reward the club’s fans with a good run in the FA Cup after last weekend’s fruitless journey to Nottingham.

Nearly 350 Exiles supporters made the 300-mile round trip for the disappointing 3-0 defeat by Kevin Nolan’s Notts County.

League One Walsall are the visitors to Rodney Parade this Saturday as Michael Flynn and his Newport players look to make the FA Cup second round.

A big payday at Anfield would have been the Exiles’ reward had they reached the third round of the cup last season.

They missed out on that after losing to Plymouth Argyle in a replay but Day isn’t giving up hope of facing one of the top sides this term.

Speaking about the excitement of the cup, Day told iFollowExiles: “I think everyone is really excited about it.

“Playing against a team in the league above is an opportunity for us to show what we can do and how good we are.

“Everyone likes to get as far as they can so we’ll look to take it as far as we can go.

“It would be great to get a bit of finances in for the club as well.

“I think at this level, and the community club we’ve got, it’s always something on the players’ minds.

“The dream is to stay in the cup until the third round and get a big team.”

On giving back something to the County faithful, particularly following that reverse at Meadow Lane, he added: “Each game home and away this year they have been fantastic.

“We can hear them as well and we appreciate every bit of support they give to us.

“Obviously, it’s not the result they’d have wanted but I’d like to think that they saw a lot of heart from the team after going down to 10 men.

“Let’s see if we can give them an FA Cup run to make up for it.”

Giving his take on last Saturday’s match, Day continued: “I thought we probably deserved a goal in the first 10 minutes.

“Both teams will usually go through spells in a game where they are on top and should score and if you don’t score when you’re on top, especially away from home, then you are going to struggle to take anything from the game.

“But it’s positive that we’ve went to a good team like Notts County and before we went down to 10 men we caused them some problems.

“It’s just disappointing because we had a plan and it’s not worked.

“It unfolded after half an hour but eight in the league at this point, we’ll take that.

“It’s a positive position for us and as long as we can stay in the mix and get through Christmas, we can really push on from there.”

Giving his take on that Dan Butler red card, Day said: “From where I was, it just looked like a full-back on full-back challenge, both going for the ball, which is something that happens 50 times a game.”