Newport kicked in teeth but rose again as League Two side prepare to host Man U

Every so often a manager and his surroundings just seem to fit one another. Graham Coughlan is a hard knocks kind of guy and Newport County are a hard knocks kind of club — they each know what it is like to punch above their weight and they each know what is like to have their teeth caved in.

A couple of us were chatting about such things with him on Thursday afternoon. We were in a makeshift press conference room at Rodney Parade and there was a drizzle in the air outside, where one man was mowing a pitch most recently used for rugby.

A sign taped to the ticket office read ‘Manchester United sold out’, and folk could have a bit of fun with that line, but Coughlan’s mind was on a lower key weekend in 2007.

He’s 49 now and never was a big-timer — he was a tough centre-half from Ireland who journeyed between the Championship and League Two across almost 500 games. But he encountered a few of his heroes along the way and that’s how he came to tell us a little story about Roy Keane.

As a serious United fan, he can’t speak highly enough of the bloke and one Saturday in January 2007 they were up against each other. Keane was managing Sunderland and Coughlan was the granite of Sheffield Wednesday’s defence, until he threw his face into the path of a goalkeeper’s knee. ‘My nose, my teeth, my palate were all busted up,’ he said. ‘I was sparko.’

What Coughlan remembers most is that with the game still going on, Keane followed him down the Hillsborough tunnel to check he was OK. He then sat with him until Coughlan’s wife arrived and phoned the next morning as well. ‘Told me it was the best I’ve looked,’ Coughlan said and they laughed about that.

Hard men flock together and Coughlan, like Keane, is a hard man. A man who runs through