JUSTIN Edinburgh has revealed who made the decision to move the Carl Zeiss Jena and Coventry City friendlies to Spytty Park, writes Michael Pearlman.

The Exiles switched both clashes from their Rodney Parade home in an effort to give the playing surface as much time as possible to bed-in after further work was undertaken over the summer to improve the drainage.

Rodney Parade is shared by County, the Newport Gwent Dragons and Newport RFC and it is hoped the work over the summer will vastly improve it this season.

However, several fans were extremely angry about the switch, commenting negatively on the Argus website and for the most part, blaming chief executive Dave Boddy.

However, Edinburgh says he’s the man who made the call.

“The pitch at Rodney Parade is looking good, the one at Spytty played excellently and I don’t think Rodney Parade is a million miles away from that,” he said.

“We made the decision to move the games and it was the right decision.

“It was absolutely my call, I felt it was important to give that pitch an extra couple of weeks and it didn’t hurt us one little bit by going to Spytty for a couple of games.”