The Harriers are rightfully getting tagged 'invincible' on the road this season with their third away win in as many games on their travels. Newport, on the other hand, are rightly or wrongly being tagged with the reputation of being hot headed and reaping the consequences by seeing players sent off or booked with too far a regular occurrence.
On Saturday at Telford they had two sent off and a further six players booked and today another two went for the early bath while this time they kept the yellow count down to just the two. Newports misfortune is not the reason they lost this game though, that was down to another dedicated performance from Steve Burrs lads.
Burr made more changes to the side for the game with Jamille Matt and Luke Medley dropping to the bench while James Vincent and Nick Wright didn't make it at all. Steve Guinan, Dave Hankin and Jack Byrne came in and that was probably down to a bit of squad rotation rather than some kind of punishment seeing we haven't been playing too badly. For Newport only Sam Foley of the former Harriers was starting and only Wayne Hatswell made it to the bench.
Following the normal scrappy start to the game it was the home team who were the first to try their luck with two shots from Gary Warren that were easily blocked by Luke Jones. The Harriers responded with a shot from Steve Guinan that the Newport keeper, Glynn Harrison, stopped at the foot of the post. County came back with a header from Warren again and this time the Harriers keeper, Danny Lewis, turned in a great save to keep the ball from rolling over the line.
Newport were now getting on top and exposing gaps in the Harriers defence with their best player, Danny Rose, doing most of the damage. He tried a shot from way out that Lewis had to stretch to keep out and then the same player found himself in acres of space in front of goal but sent his curled shot wide.
Rose was obviously troubling Lee Vaughan and the Harriers hard man defender bought him down and received a yellow card that most Newport fans thought should have been red. A minute later Newport had their first players name in the book when Ismael Yakubu clumsily bought down Dave Hankin
The game settled down for a while with just one speculative attempt on goal from Elliot Buchanan when he fired the ball across the face of the goal. Then came the first of Newports red cards.
Steve Guinan had broken through on goal and, as he approached the area, the Newport captain, Warren, lunged in and slid through Guinan taking both ball and man out of the game. The linesman immediately flagged to attract the referees attention but the ref already knew what the outcome would be and Warren went to find the soap.
With the break drawing near it was the Harriers who came close to breaking the deadlock with a foul on Scott Phelan. Kyle Storer took the free kick and watched as it sailed over the wall towards the far post but Thompson got to it in the nick of time.