RENE Howe insists he has no intention of giving up on promotion to League One, writes Michael Pearlman.

The January signing from Burton Albion scored for the Exiles in their 2-1 defeat at Mansfield, but he’s only too aware that Newport’s poor form could cost them any shot at reaching the play-offs.

And the striker knows that a win by any means is exactly the prescription to cure their ills.

"We'd much rather take a bad performance and get the win,” Howe said.

"But when your luck isn't in, it's hard. We need a 1-0 win to stop the rot, anything to stop it. But we need to keep focused.

"We aren't losing ground on teams and we can't give up on getting to the play-offs.

"When I signed I believed we could do that and it remains the aim. If we can get back to winning ways, quickly, hopefully on Tuesday and then we can kick on from there.

"We can't give up now. None of the boys will do that. We'll keep fighting."

Howe was happy to score, especially after his unfortunate miss against Fleetwood when a bobble on the Rodney Parade pitch caused him to fluff his lines.

"It was nice to get a goal, a bobble of the pitch denied me on Tuesday, the ball hit me in the hip when I was about to score, so it was nice to get one Saturday,” he said.

“I like those easy goals like I got at Mansfield, just a tap-in, it was great to get us back into the game, but we didn't sustain the pressure and that's summing us up at the minute.

"But at the end of the day, we’ve still lost the game. It's one of those goals that hurts us, we were dominating them and that has happened a lot to us at the moment.”