GRIMSBY 3 COUNTY 0

TOP scorer Aaron O’Connor didn’t travel to face Grimsby Town on Saturday and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the rest of the Newport County AFC team didn’t turn up either.

County crashed to a 3-0 defeat just days before they return to Blundell Park in the first leg of the play-offs semi-final and only time will tell how damaging the result was to their promotion hopes.

Manager Justin Edinburgh is confident that, having made five changes to his starting XI, the result and the performance will mean nothing come Wednesday night.

The Exiles will literally be a different side in the play-offs with O’Connor, Christian Jolley, Danny Crow, Lee Minshull, David Pipe, Andy Sandell and Lenny Pidgeley all set to return, and logically you’d have to agree that Saturday’s defeat will be irrelevant.

But County have certainly surrendered the initiative to the Mariners and handed their opponents a big confidence boost ahead of the biggest game of the season for both clubs.

There will be no more talk about Edinburgh’s men going into the play-offs with the momentum and, looking at the faces of the home fans and players on Saturday, it’s clear that the Lincolnshire outfit now have the belief that they can brush aside County and claim a place in the final at Wembley.

Maybe that will work to the Exiles’ advantage.

If there is even a little bit of complacency in the opposition camp then maybe the team selection was a tactical masterstroke from Edinburgh.

We’ll know by 7pm on Sunday at Rodney Parade.

Edinburgh has admitted that his side played poorly at the weekend, claiming that his players had one eye on Wednesday.

At times it looked like their mind, body and soul would rather be elsewhere. After a bright start when Scott Donnelly and Conor Washington both tested Greg Fleming in the Grimsby goal it was the other goalkeeper who took centre stage.

Sadly for Alan Julian he didn’t enjoy the spotlight, at least not initially.

The hosts’ opening goal on 18 minutes will definitely be one that the ex-Stevenage stopper will want to forget as Jamie Devitt’s long-range free-kick looped into the top corner of his net far too easily.

Five minutes later Julian’s luck was out again as a weak Andi Thanoj effort at ground level clipped his shin before leaping up and into the net to double Grimsby’s advantage.

Pidgeley’s deputy then showed some of the shot-stopping ability that prompted Edinburgh to sign him as his first choice last summer with a superb point-blank save from Frankie Artus and a string of impressive blocks after the break.

But the damage had been done and it was game over just before the interval when Artus set up Liam Hearn to drive the ball under a blameless Julian.

Of the other deputies on show Washington was the only one to emerge with much credit and his performances over the past few weeks will mean he will have a part to play in the semis and, so he’ll hope, at Wembley.

The other positives for Edinburgh were the continued rehabilitation of Mike Flynn, who played 90 minutes, and Crow, who got half an hour from the bench, and the fact that there were no fresh injuries picked up.

The manager’s job now is to ensure his players remember all the hard work that led up to this point and forget everything about Saturday.

Let the rollercoaster ride begin.

Grimsby: Fleming, Hatton, Thomas, Miller, Disley (Southwell, 59), Hearn (Hannah, 59), Artus, Devitt, Thanoj, Naylor, Taylor (Marshall, 70)

Subs not used: Niven, Wood

Booked: Artus

County: Julian, Hughes, Boateng, James, Anthony, Flynn, Gilbey, Donnelly (Evans, 84), Willmott, Washington (Swallow, 69), Griffiths (Crow, 61)

Subs not used: Harris, Pidgeley

Booked: Donnelly

Referee: D Ford

Attendance: 4,555 (73 County)