MIKE FLYNN SAYS: It’s the worst time to be injured

And the fixture pile-up means this is the worst time to be sidelined because you miss so many matches.

I definitely won’t be playing against Dartford this afternoon and probably not at Nuneaton on Monday but I’m hoping I’ll be fit by the time we travel to Cambridge on Friday.

It’s been a mixed week for the lads. The defeat at Stockport was obviously very disappointing.

It’s always a terrible feeling to lose to an own goal and we could have had a couple of penalties as well so it was a day to forget really.

It was pleasing to bounce back with a good win at Southport on Tuesday with Aaron O’Connor and Chris-tian Jolley getting the goals.

If we can get those two confident and flying then look out the rest of the league because they will take some stopping.

Thursday’s match against Gateshead in Boston was a good one to miss by all accounts!

The lads tell me the pitch was in a bit of a state and both sides were probably struggling a little bit having played only 48 hours previously.

Apart from the fact that the game is finally done and dusted, the main positive is that it was a second clean sheet for us and that is encouraging because, with the attacking talents we’ve got, if we can start to shut teams out as well it will stand us in good stead for the last eight games of the season.

Looking at the table we’re seven points behind Mans-field and that is not going to be easy to make up but we’ll never throw in the towel in terms of winning the league.

That is definitely still our aim as a squad and it will be until its mathematically impossible for us to catch Mansfield, Kidderminster or Wrexham.

I think we probably need to win seven of our eight matches so today and Monday will have a massive bearing on our title chances.

If we can get two wins then the table could look very different at 5pm on Monday.

Mansfield have still got to play Wrexham twice and Macclesfield as well so you’d think they will drop points between now and the end of the season. If they win every game then they deserve to go up but I can’t see any side doing that with the games coming thick and fast.

I haven’t seen our new signings Michael Boateng and Alex Gilbey in action yet but I’m pleased that the manager decided to freshen things up and improve competition in the squad.

Once we get the two Easter games out of the way we’ll have the luxury of three days on the training pitch before the match at Cambridge and that will hopefully give Michael and Alex the chance to get to know everyone and get used to the way we like to play.

It’s been a bit odd over the last week. I haven’t seen much of the lads because they’ve been on the road pretty much all the time.

I was in for a bit of light training yesterday with the rest of the boys who are coming back from injury.

Me, Danny Crow, Ben Swallow, Ismail Yakubu and Jake Harris did a bit of running and some ball work.

None of us are far away from being fit but we don’t want to rush back and risk making things worse.

I was at a reunion on Thursday for the Wigan side that won the old Division Two with a hundred points back in the 2002/03 season.

It was a great night seeing some old friends and meeting the supporters again.

My time at Wigan was up there with playing for Newport County as the best period of my career.

We had a great team with the likes of Leighton Baines, who has just been away with England, Jimmy Bullard, Matt Jackson and Nathan Ellington. John Filan, the best goalkeeper I’ve played with, flew in from Australia and Jason de Vos came over from Canada so I’m really glad I could be there too.

The spirit in the team back then was just brilliant and I’ll take a lot from the experience of being in that dressing room if I ever go into management after I retire.

Our manager back then was Paul Jewell and the way that Justin Edinburgh has put this squad together reminds me of how Paul worked a decade ago.

Hopefully I’ll be attending the Newport County promotion reunion ten years from now.