VISITING team aside, the only people to come out of Newport County AFC v Accrington Stanley with any credit on Monday were Mark Jones and his ground staff at Rodney Parade.

Considering that Newport RFC played on the pitch on Saturday and Newport Gwent Dragons on Sunday the playing surface was in remarkably good condition on Monday afternoon.

Add to that the heavy rain overnight on Sunday that left the pitch saturated come Monday morning and it’s a minor miracle that the League Two fixture went ahead at all.

Head of operations Jones and his team – head groundsman James Stuart and fellow ground staff Nick Delahay, Jon Raymond and Josh Edwards – reported for duty at 5.30am on Monday to ensure the game was not postponed.

It’s a pity that hard work wasn’t matched by the County players in the afternoon with manager Warren Feeney admitting he was disappointed with the effort from his team as they slipped to a 2-0 defeat.

It was a stark contrast to Friday’s impressive display at Northampton Town when the Exiles outplayed the runaway league leaders for long stretches of the match only to lose 1-0.

New striker Souleymane Coulibaly is expected to finally complete his loan move from Peterborough United this week and he should make a difference to the injury-hit squad.

But Feeney and the players need to avoid falling into the trap of talking about the pitch too much and using to as an excuse for poor performances at home.

In recent weeks we’ve seen Stanley, Bristol Rovers and Barnet all win comfortably at Rodney Parade.

They’ve dealt with the difficult conditions and scored nine goals between them to County’s one.

And Feeney’s men previously won three successive games on the sand so it can be done.

But it seems to have become something of a psychological barrier at the moment and County can’t afford to be going into home games full of dread.