NEWPORT County AFC were beaten 2-1 by Justin Edinburgh’s Northampton Town in their final pre-season friendly but Exiles boss Michael Flynn believes his side are ready for the big kick-off in League Two.

The visitors led 1-0 at Sixfields after half-time substitute Lamar Reynolds (below) converted his third opportunity midway through the second half to confirm his huge potential.

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Northampton responded almost straight away to level through sub Chris Long before defender Leon Barnett headed in a winner for Cobblers after a raft of changes from both teams had made the final 20 minutes pretty meaningless.

But the first 70 minutes were highly encouraging for Flynn, coach Wayne Hatswell and adviser Lennie Lawrence as County, lining up in a 5-3-2 formation, easily matched their League One opponents.

Dan Butler, Mickey Demetriou, Scot Bennett, Mark O’Brien and David Pipe defended well in the first half, containing the threat of former Cardiff City striker Alex Revell.

Captain Joss Labadie made a nuisance of himself in front of the defence, picking up a yellow card in the second half for persistent offending.

And Matty Dolan and Sean Rigg looked to get forward at every opportunity to help out the front two of Robbie Willmott and Frank Nouble.

“I’m not going to get too carried away and I wouldn’t have been too despondent if we’d lost convincingly,” said Flynn, who was already looking ahead to the season-opener at Stevenage during the second half.

“It’s about what we do on the day next week but I was extremely happy with what I saw out there.

“We still conceded two goals and we have to cut those things out but we were solid and we were the better team in large parts of the game.

“We should have scored more goals but I made a lot of changes.

“Two young boys came on, a couple of trialists and because I was happy with what I was seeing I was more concerned about injuries so I was preparing for next week.

“I was more than happy so I decided to make the changes to protect people for next weekend.”

Nouble enjoyed a good battle with former County star Regan Poole and the 19-year-old, who is with the Cobblers on a season-long loan from Manchester United, handled the physical front man well for the most part.

Reynolds was not named on the team sheet but he came on for the second half in place of Bennett and he immediately provided an extra cutting edge to push his case for a starting spot at the Lamex Stadium.

“There’s no problem with Lamar, [coach] James Bittner just forgot to put him on the team sheet,” explained Flynn (below right with Hatswell).

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“I don’t want to talk too much about him. We know he’s quick and he took his goal well but he should have had two, definitely.

“Robbie Willmott played in three different positions and I thought he was outstanding.

“He was on set-plays, he played up front, he played wing-back and he played centre midfield and he did well in every single one of them.

“I said he was a utility man and I think he’s proved that.

“I thought Frank was a handful, Matty Dolan was brilliant, Labs was brilliant and Dan Butler was very good. There was a lot of good performances.”