The Official Newport County Match Thread (Sponsored by A Second Trip to South Wales in Six Weeks "for all your "magic of the cup" needs")

Gills return to the scene of their last victory tomorrow as they enter the oldest national football competition in the world with a 1st Round fixture away at Newport County.

It's staggering the difference a mere six weeks can make in the world of football. Back on 20th September, Gills overcame a ludicrously early goal (a continuing trend) and some concerted early pressure to run out comfortable 1-3 winners against a struggling Newport side. By the final whistle we were 21 league games undefeated and the hooning rain that had drenched the away end during the match failed to dampen the party spirit among the 601-strong away support. Gills sat top of the pile, Newport just outside the relegation places and all was well with the world.

Since then we've suffered from a manager missing through health reasons, a plethora of injuries to key players, suspensions, iffy (not that one) red cards and contributed to our own downfall with some poor defending culminating in a continuing ability to ship early goals that leave us chasing games. The unbeaten run went pop the very next game after Newport and we've lost four of the last five games with only a very, very late goal against Cheltenham sparing us from a five match losing streak. From top of the table to 8th place is a now all too familiar October horror story.

The injured foursome of Masterson, Euan Williams, Garath McCleary and Jonny Williams have been joined in the treatment room by Glenn Morris after his early departure from last weekend's game. His injury sounds like it might rule him out for several weeks, with budding scapegoat, Jake Turner taking his place between the sticks. On the plus side, Sam Gale and Jonny Williams return from suspension, the former's return surely indicating a place on the bench for budding scapegoat, Shad Ogie.

Newport are currently on a LWLW form streak that qualifies as a distinct improvement on their results across August and September but still conspires to leave them at the foot of the table. Their last fixture was a 0-3 thumping of Harrogate away from home last Saturday that saw them reduce the gap to safety to just two points. They absolutely have the ability to end our involvement in the FA Cup disappointingly early as the opening 20 minutes in our previous meeting clearly showed, we could easily have been three down inside that timeframe and would have had no complaints had we been.

Both sides fell at the first hurdle in the FA Cup last season, Gills at home to Blackpool, County at home to Peterborough, and I doubt either are thrilled with this particular draw. For Gills it's a schlep to a fairly distant venue we've recently visited, for Newport it's (on paper) a tough fixture against a side that's already beaten them once this season. One thing's for sure, there absolutely won't be 4000+ in attendance with 601 from Kent making the trip this time. As of yesterday we were 25 shy of selling out our 306 ticket allocation, which is a decent number all things considered.

The head to head remains a thing of horror despite victory on our last visit, Gills lagging by 29 wins to the Exile's 42. Given the paucity of available footage of Gills winning at Rodney Parade, and in a feeble attempt to woo the footballing gods to let us win tomorrow, I've plumped for the highlights from our recent trip to this corner of South Wales and a chance to enjoy Jonny Smith's curler again (ooh-er!).

Safe travels to all those making the trip, I hope you at least stay dry this time. I considered attending for about 0.1 of a nanosecond before deciding one visit to Newport in a season is more than sufficient. Instead, it's a ludicrously early start for an hour's drive to Herr Jnr Jnr's latest league match somewhere near the M1 (K/O 9.30am if you please!!!) followed by a top of the table clash between Corby Town and Carlton Town that is guaranteed to feature plenty of liquid refreshment to offset Herr Jnr and all her little pals having a Halloween sleepover in my house tonight all razzed up on Trick or Treat goodies and TikTok videos. The absolute horror.

Enjoy the game, and...

COYG!!!