Awford: Loss hard to swallow

Portsmouth manager Andy Awford felt his side deserved more than a 1-0 defeat to Newport at Rodney Parade.

The Pompey boss watched his side go down to a controversial winner from Mark Byrne which was initially disallowed, then awarded amid cries for offside. The result sees Awford's men fall to 17th place in League Two, while a seventh win in eight games has propelled Newport into the automatic promotion spots. The hosts got the controversial breakthrough after 68 minutes. As Byrne shot from the left corner of the box, Aaron O'Connor ran across the line of the ball and it eventually found the bottom corner of the net. O'Connor was ruled offside by the assistant referee but referee Michael Bull, to the anger of the Portsmouth players and fans, awarded the goal after he decided the striker did not get a touch. Awford said: "It's difficult to take. I'm as honest as the day is long and if the players don't do enough they get a kick up the backside, but they did enough. "I've got to be careful what I say because I don't want to get fined, but we've been done by something out of our hands and that is disappointing. "There should have been two penalties for us. The first on Jed Wallace looks a stonewall penalty and there was a handball late on. "At the time I thought it was handball and seven or eight of our boys are appealing for it, and that looked stonewall as well. We deserved something today. "We had 17 shots compared to their eight, but you don't always get what you deserve and today we didn't." Newport manager Justin Edinburgh said: "We had to dig in and get a result. "It was a competitive game that needed to be seen out and credit to Portsmouth, both sides went head-to-head and there wasn't much room for moving the ball. It was a battle. "I did think we were below our best and it's massive that we've ground out the win and taken six points off of Portsmouth, who are the biggest club in this league. "To do that is a massive achievement for a club like us. We had to dig deep and work hard and will do so every week. "I don't feel we had any luck with our goal, the laws being the law, it has to stand."