NEWPORT County assistant manager Jimmy Dack has revealed the Exiles are battling to stay undefeated for the rest of the campaign following a team meeting, writes Michael Pearlman.

County’s horrible 2014 has improved markedly in recent weeks, losing only two of their last seven and following the 2-1 reverse to Plymouth, Justin Edinburgh challenged his side to build some momentum by staying undefeated until the campaign ends.

It’ll be tough with clashes against York and Rochdale, but Dack is confident in his charges.

“We are going to try as hard as we can to win the two games,” he said.

“We’ve had a meeting and set that target and we believe it’s possible for us.

“We didn’t want to finish on the same horrible run as we’ve been on and we have set our stall out to try and carry this run on and stay unbeaten until the end of the season.

“So far we are hitting that target, we’ve got two tough games left but we’ll try and win them both.”

Dack feels the Exiles have let themselves down this season against the sides of a similar ability, according to the league table.

“We’ve learned a lot about ourselves this season and about our players and we’ve learned a lot about League Two,” he said.

“We don’t think we’ve cracked it by any means, after 22 games we were in the play-offs but we didn’t carry that on into the second half of the season.

“One or two of our younger players will have learned a lot about themselves this season.

“We’ll look back at what we’ve done well and what we haven’t. We’ve had good performances and results against the top teams, like we did again on Monday, and to be fair, we’ve also done quite well also against the bottom teams.

“Where we have struggled is against those in and around us, the middle teams and we need to identify why that is.

“The season is 46 games long and we need to strive for consistency.”

Dack now wants the Exiles to finish on a high when Rochdale close out the season at Rodney Parade.

“Especially at home, we want to make Rodney Parade our fortress, from our first 12 games at home this season we had eight wins and two draws and that is what we want to get back to,” he said.

“The players appreciate our home support, our fans put the fear of god in the opposition when they are shouting and screaming and we want to reward them more than we have been.”