Vaka leads victory charge on a crucial day for Newport

The Old Showground outfit ran in six tries as they beat fellow strugglers Dudley Kingswinford 43-24 in what director of rugby Bod Adams had described as a ‘must-win clash’.

A change in tactic helped Newport take charge of the contest and establish a 33-5 half-time advantage.

Hendry Vaka led the way with a hat-trick of scores, while Fredrick Bailey and George Castledine also touched down and Connor Adams added four conversions.

A try from Charlie Gamble, plus a conversion and penalty from Adams completed Newport’s scoring after the break.

“Normally when we win the toss at home we opt to go up the slope, but we decided to go down it this week to try to put them under early pressure,” said Adams.

“And it worked. That was our best opening 40 minutes of the season.

“Our handling was very good and some of the moves that we had worked on in training came off and resulted in a couple of tries.

“We also defended well first half and put the game to bed.

“We didn’t control the game as I would have liked in the second half, but there are plenty of positives to take from the performance.

“The main objectives were to put in a good performance, win the game and score a few tries and we did that.”

The victory saw Newport cut the close the gap on the sides directly above them in the standings, and also boosted their hopes for being the best 13th-placed team across their level – a position which will be good enough to ensure survival.

“We cut the gap to Hornets and Bournville to 11 points in our league and to one in the race to be the best 13th-placed team in the other divisions at this level,” added Adams.

“We play our game in hand on Saturday, but it’s going to be a tough one at Hinckley.

“They are coming off the back of a heavy defeat on Saturday, which has probably made our job harder.

“But we beat them at home and hopefully Saturday’s win will have boosted the lads’ confidence.”

One negative for Newport was an injury to second row Matt Hubbard.

“Matt has broken his hand and he will be out for six to eight weeks,” said Adams. “It’s a blow because he is our pack leader.

“We now have 11 first-team players missing due to unavailability or injuries.

“I wondered earlier in the season if our squad was too big, but that’s not proved to be the case.

“We have a couple of lads from Nottingham University training with us this week and we will see if anything happens regarding them joining us.”