DEFENDER Mickey Demetriou says the Newport County squad can have no complaints with manager Michael Flynn’s decision to have them train on Christmas Day.

The Exiles head to high-flying Exeter City on Boxing Day looking to end a run of seven League Two games without a win after Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at bottom side Morecambe.

Leading 1-0 through Joss Labadie’s early strike, the visitors crumbled following the interval, delivering a second-half performance Flynn described as a “disgrace”.

Flynn had warned his players before the match that they faced training on Wednesday morning if he wasn’t happy with their display against the Shrimps.

All was going well for Demetriou and co thanks to a positive first-half showing, with County hoping to use Jamille Matt’s late leveller the previous Saturday as a springboard to turn their form around.

However, there only ever looked like being one winner after Cole Stockton equalised midway through the second period.

Sure enough, 10 minutes from time, long-time County adversary Kevin Ellison set-up John O’Sullivan to seal three precious points for the struggling hosts.

Asked following the final whistle if he was expecting Flynn to carry out his Christmas Day threat, Demetriou said: “After that performance, yes.

“He doesn’t want to do it, but I think we need to do it because we can’t have days off when we’re not performing properly.

“If we had won the game then I’m sure we would have been off.

“But we need to work hard with each other, we need to work together, and if that means coming in on Christmas Day then we have to come in.

“At the end of the day, there’s a game on Boxing Day.

“We need to try and bounce back. We’re normally pretty good at bouncing back so we need to find ourselves again.

“We were brilliant at the start of the season and we just need to try and find that form again.

“We played really well in the first half and it felt like were back to our best.

“We were pressing high up the pitch, winning balls back, the midfield was playing really well, the strikers were getting the ball down and we were backing them up as a back four.

“It just fell away in the second half and we need to try and work out why that happened.

“It’s hard to say what went wrong because we can’t give an answer on that one. If we knew that it wouldn’t have happened.

“There’s nine points available in the next nine or 10 days. It would have been nice to start the festive period off well, but it has not happened, so we have to give it our best at Exeter.

“Hopefully we can put in a first-half performance and try and do that for 90 minutes.”

He added: “We’ve got a long season left and it’s not going to hinge on this game.

“Yes, it’s happened, but as we always say when we win games, we have to move on to the next one.

“It’s going to be hard to move on, but we need to because we need to stick together as a team.

“We’re a good bunch of lads and we need to start performing.

“We need to stop the rot. We need to find a way. We probably thought we did in the first half.

“We had a couple of chances that could have put us 3-0 up come half-time, but that didn’t happen.

“But we can’t blame the strikers because other people have got to chip in with goals as well.

“Maybe at the start of the season we’d dig out that 1-0 and take the three points.

“We’re very disappointed. Let’s not dress it up, we weren’t good enough in the second half.

“I’m not sure what changed. We were all over them in the first half, we battered them, and they probably did the same thing to us in the second half.

“We didn’t win our battles, we didn’t win the first ball and we didn’t win the second ball.”

He continued: “We’re our own worst critics. Don’t think we’re going to forget about that because it’s going to be playing on boys’ minds.

“We need to work out why it happened. Why it changed so much in the second half.”