JIMMY Dack says he and his players will fight to the end of the season to secure a play-off place for Newport County AFC.

County revived their hopes of a top seven finish in League Two with a vital victory over Luton Town on Tuesday night thanks to Aaron O’Connor’s winner.

That lifted the Exiles to eighth in the table, level on points with seventh-placed Stevenage and above Plymouth Argyle – where they go on Saturday.

Captain Darren Jones, who kept the armband despite Andy Sandell’s return to the side, typifies the determination of the Exiles squad not to let their promotion push fizzle out.

Dack revealed that the defender has been playing with an injury for weeks.

“Darren Jones has not trained for the best part of two weeks. He’s been struggling with an injury but he just keeps going,” said the County boss.

“He is struggling but we pack him in ice and he just keeps churning out great performances.

“He’s a Newport boy and he’s a credit to this football club.

“Any win at this time of the season is massive,” he added after toppling the Hatters.

“There have been a few knockers saying that we’re out of it but that’s great for us because it just spurs us on even more.

“I know that that group of players is fighting for this football club.

“We have worked too hard over the last few years to throw it all away now. We are going to fight until the end.”

And after securing the first home win of his reign, Dack says his side go to Plymouth on Saturday full of confidence following some eye-catching wins on the road in recent weeks.

“We’ve been away to Burton and won, we’ve been away to Wycombe and won and we are good away from home,” he said.

“We are in charge of our destiny and if we continue to win our games then we are in for a good season. We might not win them all but we will go out and give it a good go.”

Tuesday’s win came about after County reverted to a 5-3-2 or 3-5-2 formation and Dack said: “I just thought that at home we needed to be more expansive and get more bodies into the box and it worked.

“We have been tweaking the system because we’ve not quite had the centre-halves to pick at times but we know 3-5-2.

“I think it got a bit stale after Christmas and teams started working us out a bit but we reverted to it and it worked a treat for us.”