ANY team with aspirations of winning promotion needs a prolific goalscorer, and this season Newport County AFC are blessed to have two top strikers.
Padraig Amond netted his 21st goal of the season during Saturday’s 2-0 home win over Carlisle United, taking him level with Aaron O’Connor’s tally during the 2012-2013 National League promotion season.
Not since Craig Reid banged in 27 goals in the 2009-10 Conference South title-winning campaign has an Exiles player scored more than Amond in a single season.
And you have to go back to 1983-1984, when John Aldridge also scored 27, to find a County striker hitting such heights in the Football League.
Jamille Matt didn’t add to his tally of 17 goals on Saturday but he put in another selfless display up front and manager Michael Flynn revealed after the match that the former Blackpool man had not slept at all the night before the game due to a family emergency.
He and Amond have formed a lethal partnership up front over the last seven months and, statistically speaking, they are the club’s best strike duo since Reid and Sam Foley in 2009-10.
Foley also bagged 17 goals that season to add to Reid’s 27, meaning Amond and Matt are just six goals behind with two months of the season still to go.
Foley and Reid’s goals were scored at a lower level, of course, and it is 36 years since the club had such a prolific partnership in the Football League.
The 1982-83 season was a tale of so near and yet so far for Colin Addison’s team as Aldridge and Tommy Tynan (above) fired the Ironsides to fourth place in the third tier.
That remains the club’s highest post-war league finish but Tynan’s 33 goals and 20 from Aldridge were not quite enough to seal promotion to what is now known as the Championship.
Amond and Matt will have to have an incredible end to this season if they are to match Tynan and Aldridge’s combined tally of 53 goals and if they get anywhere near that then the Exiles will surely be real play-off contenders.
“When I was at Grimsby, I got 37,” said Amond at the weekend. “I don’t think I’ll make that!
“I’m happy so far with my tally and I just want to keep on going, whatever the final tally may be,” he told iFollow Exiles.
“I just want to score as many more as I can before the end of the season and hopefully that takes us into the play-offs mix.
“We’ve got 12 games left in the league and hopefully another three more maybe and I’ll be looking to score in a good few of those games.”
Amond will not be taking his eyes off the prize and Matt too is hungry for more goals as he enjoys by far the most successful season of his career.
“I got a bit of stick for bringing him in because he’d never really scored [that many goals],” said Flynn recently.
“He’s scored 17 now and he’s still going. He’s loving his football, and it’s not just his goals.
“He’s been brilliant for us. He’s the right type of player for this football club.
“I did my homework on him, as I do with all the other players. I do know what I’m doing.
“He had a couple of niggles through pre-season and his confidence was still a bit short, but I had a good chat with him.
“I told him I’d brought him here to score goals and that I believed in him.
“I told him to stop putting pressure on himself, to get himself right and then he’d kick on from there, and that’s what he’s done.
“I can’t remember a better strike partnership for this club than him and Podge.”
And the January arrivals of Ade Azeez, who scored his first County goal on Saturday, and Harry McKirdy means the pair now have genuine competition – something that has been missing since the departures of Mark Harris and particularly Antoine Semenyo.
McKirdy hasn’t had much of a chance to show what he can do as yet, but Azeez played alongside Amond and Matt at the weekend and looked a real handful.
His pace really worried the Carlisle defence and, if he can stay fit, he’s capable of adding another dimension to County’s already-potent attack.
It all adds up to what should be an exciting end to the season, if the Exiles play their cards right.
Goals earn points, and what do points make? Prizes!
Read more: Flynn full of praise for Azeez and Matt after vital victory
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