NEWPORT County owe their fans a big apology for a very poor performance, according to the Exiles’ assistant manager Jimmy Dack.

County went down 2-0 to bottom of the Conference Barrow at Rodney Parade on Saturday, squandering a chance to return to the top of the table.

Supporters turned up at 8.30am and spent four hours helping to clear snow from the pitch on a day that went from bad to worse thereafter.

Not only did County lose out, but they also saw Conference top scorer Aaron O’Connor stretcher-ed off with a potentially serious injury.

O’Connor "heard something pop" in his thigh and faces a scan in the next 48 hours that will determine the extent of the damage.

It was far from the day the impressive volunteers would’ve wished for and Dack, who stood in for Justin Edinburgh who didn’t want to talk to the press, explained the frustration and regret the management team felt.

"What we have to say to the fans is we are really disappointed and we let you all down, because you did brilliantly to get the game on.

"We started the game with not the right attitude and Barrow deserved their win, they deserved to beat us and were better than us all over the park.

"We (Edinburgh and Dack) tried everything, we tried to change the shape and the personnel and it just wasn’t to be, we were really disappointing.

"We’ve had a bad day at the office and have missed the opportunity to go to top, that’s massively disappointing.

"The fans wanted the game on to go top of the league and we let them down, we were really poor.

"We are in and out of late at home and that’s not something we can afford if we want to win the league.

"The fans deserve a lot more, they’ve come out in the freezing cold and we apologise, it was a dismal performance.

"Our game plan was the same as always but the execution was wrong.

"We were playing too much long ball, we were telling them to do otherwise but we couldn’t seem to do that."

Dack revealed that the club are hopeful O’Connor’s injury won’t be serious, but has challenged the other players to step up in his absence.

"Aaron is a big miss because of his goals, but the players can’t keep relying on Aaron, we’ve got to share the workload and the goals, we need to improve that all over the park," he said.

"We could’ve been out there for the rest of the week and I don’t think we’d have scored a goal.

"I don’t think it’s hopefully as bad as we first thought with the way he went down, he’s up and about now, he felt a pop when he went for a strike at goal.

"It seems to have settled down, we are hopeful but we won’t know until we do the scan."