A horrible day , wet , cold and windy at Newport Stadium for the visit of fellow gwent side Tredegar Town. Only a place seperated the teams before kick off in the league standings with Tredegar the higher placed team .
For the first time this season Manager Laurence Owen was able to name 16 players , having a full bench . Luke Fernquest out for 12 weeks with a broken wrist returned to the bench as did new signing Keiron Porter and there was a return to the starting line up for centre half Mike Binning for the first time in 6 weeks . The negatives were the late withdrawal of the influential Matthew Currie and the absence of Matt Pimm ( leg ) and Danny Penn ( suspended )
On a fast surface Llanwerns 433 attacking formation were immediately on the front foot passing the ball from left to right and hassling thier opponents,
The Steelmen opened the scoring after 18 minutes when a superb bit of individual play from Mike Vaux saw him take on his marker and from wide out deliver a pinpoint ball to the back post for Mike Aviss to thunder a header past the helpless keeper .
Marcus Power should have done better on 29 mins when he was at the back post after a left footed Ashley Sully cross but he could not control his effort .
Tredegar were still probing and two good saves from Nicky Church kept the Steelmen in front and Morris at the other end thwarted Power after a sweeping move with a full stretch save .

HT 1-0

With the rain beating down both sides still concentrated on playing good passing football and Tredegar to their credit were edging the quality but without really getting in behind the Llanwern defence . The game was really an end to end affair .On 60 minutes a double substitution showed the llanwern managers frustrations , sending on Fernquest and Porter for Palmer and Aviss and moving back to a 442 formation . On 67 minutes a very rash challenge on Mike Vaux saw a Town player receive a straight red card , this galvanised the visitors even more and it looked like it was them who had the extra man in the final 20 mins as they attacked looking for an equaliser . Mike Vaux had a great chance to put the game safe when a great flick on saw him clean through but his attempted lob went wide of the target when he should have done better .
The game played out for a slender but much needed victory and credit must go to both sides in poor conditions who played the game in a good spirit and always tried to pass the ball around