Hatswell issues rallying cry

Wayne Hatswell has called on the Rodney Parade faithful to give away sides nightmares in Newport to boost County's play-off bid.

The assistant coach saw his side come from behind to claim a battling 1-1 draw against struggling Cheltenham Town. The Exiles have not managed a win at home for more than two months and sit two points behind eighth-placed Stevenage. Newport gifted the League Two strugglers the advantage after 13 minutes when Welsh striker Wes Burns netted after Kevin Feely and goalkeeper Joe Day got their wires crossed. But the Exiles struck back with five minutes of the first half remaining through on-loan Swindon Town striker Storey. Full-back Ryan Jackson worked a yard of space on his right flank and delivered a pinpoint ball to Storey, who saw his looping header dip under the crossbar and in for the equaliser. And Hatswell has called on their home support to frighten their promotion rivals into submission when they travel to South Wales. He said "Me and Jimmy said the crowd were brilliant, we really do need them. "As hard as it can be at times when we give the ball away and it doesn't look pretty, but that's League Two football. "It's a tough environment but we really need them from now until the end of the season because we need to start making this place somewhere horrible to come to again. "Fair play they stuck with us and that's what I expect. "We gave ourselves a mountain to climb after the mistake meant we were 1-0 down. "We're not disappointed, our play-off push is still in our hands as we have to play a lot of the teams around us in the next few weeks. "We've got Luton on Tuesday and hopefully we can look towards that one now and get ourselves back into the play-offs." Cheltenham caretaker manager Russell Milton praised his side's battling qualities. He said: "It was a good battling performance and I can't fault that. "We went 1-0 up but we were punished with their only real chance of the half, it took them 27 minutes to get the ball in the goalkeeper's hands. "We have to hold on to these leads but it was just one cross and header that he did well to score from. "We had chances in the second half as well and limited them to just a few. I thought we did really well. "We needed the second goal and we had the opportunities. The boys threw their bodies on the line and we need to keep doing that. "It's when you're down where we are that things don't go your way."