Newport desperate to squeeze every last drop out of hosting Man United in FA Cup

Ryan Delaney is discussing how Newport County’s players will go after Manchester United shirts at the end of Sunday's FA Cup tie at Rodney Parade when manager Graham Coughlan leans over to interrupt his captain mid-sentence.

‘If you get one, get one for me will ya?’ says Coughlan.

The two Irishmen are boyhood United fans and by no means alone in a squad that is relishing the biggest game in Newport’s history.

You can’t blame the players and supporters for wanting to grab any memento and squeeze every last drop from the occasion. After all, this is the club that lost everything.

When Newport were liquidated in 1988, all their assets were auctioned off in Cardiff for the grand total of £12,000.

The lawnmower went and so did the multi-gym. A set of black armbands was bought for a quid. The first-team kit was sold too: the goalkeeper’s jersey fetched £19 and the No.10 shirt made famous by Tommy Tynan in the halcyon days just a few years earlier, when Newport won the Welsh Cup and reached the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup, went for £50.

When the club rose from the ashes as Newport AFC a year later, it raised £8,000 to buy back the County name from the administrator but had to start again way down in the Hellenic League.

Newport had been evicted from their Somerton Park home so played in exile nearly a hundred miles away in the Cotswolds town of Moreton-in-Marsh.

The club crest, displayed proudly alongside the Manchester United badge on the electronic scoreboard at Rodney Parade on Thursday, bears the simple inscription: ‘1912 exiles 1989’.

When Newport made it back into the Football League in May 2013 after a quarter of a century in the wilderness, most people were too engrossed in Sir Alex Ferguson’s shock