NEWPORT head coach Sven Cronk has stressed his side’s urgent need to win against Swansea on Saturday, emphasising the showdown with the All Whites is “massive”.

Both Black and Ambers coaches and players are under pressure after yesterday’s 38-18 defeat to Pontypridd saw them rooted to the bottom of the league.

Although they were well beaten by the double champions and shipped five tries, the game was in the balance until the closing stages.

Despite being on the rack for almost the entire game, Newport trailed by just six points with minutes to go after courageously refusing to give in.

But with just one point to show for their efforts so far, they desperately need to stem the tide and get back to winning ways after three Principality Premiership defeats out of three this season.

Speaking about the weekend’s defeat at Sardis Road, Cronk said: “Pontypridd were in danger of overrunning us in the first half but our scramble defence took care of things and there was a great work ethic to get back into it.

“We didn’t really get a foothold in the game at all and didn’t play at all in the first half.

“We just didn’t get any territory or go through phases in their half. So we were up against it a bit.

“We addressed that after half-time and we went out and played some good stuff in the second half and we came down to seven or eight minutes left and it’s a six-point game.”

Newport will have to improve their scrum because they endured a torrid time from the Ponty front row.

“Alex Jeffries (promising Dragons academy tighthead prop) is a young kid and he’s got to learn from things. You’ve just got to keep working with him.

“Gethin Robinson came on and Gethin can scrummage. We were under pressure in the scrum but we will work on it.”

Cronk is upbeat but knows a victory is badly needed when Swansea visit Rodney Parade on the weekend.

“ I felt we should have got more out of last week’s game against Llanelli and we could have came away with a bonus point against Ponty.

“If we’d showed a bit more composure we could have been looking at a different result but there were loads of positives.

“We haven’t got time. We need to win, there’s no question about that. Swansea is a massive game on Saturday.”