James Rowberry: Newport County threw away win at Colchester

The Exiles looked set to climb to fifth in League Two on Friday night thanks to Dom Telford's first-half cracker.

However, the U's claimed a share of the spoils with 13 minutes to go when Day came off his line, stopped and was caught in no-man's land from ball over the top, allowing striker Freddie Sears to lob in a leveller.

It was an error from the experienced goalkeeper, who returned to Rodney Parade after two seasons at Cardiff City in the summer, but the County boss declined to single out one man.

Newport County manager James Rowberry

“I am not going to come to the press and criticise my players,” said Rowberry. “That's not going to be me, I made a commitment to myself and my players that I would never do that.

“It's a collective win, it's a collective draw, it's a collective loss. I will stick to that and we had enough chances to win the game.”

Telford scored for the seventh successive league game – taking his personal tally to 13 plus an EFL Trophy strike – after James Clarke’s excellent interception.

The striker hit the post in the second half and the Exiles failed to make the most of finding themselves in promising positions on a number of occasions.

“I know that they had a lot of possession in the second half to a degree but they didn't threaten our goal,” said Rowberry.

“We had so many chances to win the game but we just weren't clinical enough. I am disappointed not to get a win. I am frustrated, probably the most frustrated that I have been [since taking over].”

County lost late on to Swindon in Newport on November 20, drew 1-1 at Crawley on Tuesday night and had a rapid turnaround to the game in Essex.

Asked if the travel played a part in the game, Rowberry replied: "No because we had enough chances to win the game.

"I made four changes to the starting line-up and I didn't make any changes in the game because I didn’t think that we needed to. That was proven with the chances that we created.”