GOALKEEPER Joe Day insists belief is as strong as ever inside the Newport County AFC dressing room and the target remains a place in the League Two play-offs.

Day, nursing a sprained tendon in his hand, earned a first clean sheet since December 23 as the Exiles battled to a 0-0 draw with automatic promotion hopefuls Notts County at Rodney Parade on Saturday.

That halted a run of three successive league defeats for Michael Flynn’s men away from home against play-off rivals – 3-1 at Lincoln City, 2-0 at Colchester United and 5-0 at Mansfield Town last Tuesday.

County are 12th in the table, six points below the top seven with 13 games still to play, and Day is certain that they can maintain their promotion bid.

“The position we’re in there’s no point playing the games if we don’t feel we can go on and make a push for the play-offs,” said the 27-year-old stopper.

“We’ve got to believe it while it’s there for us.

“I think everyone in the dressing room believes we can do it – none more so than the ones who were here at the end of last season to experience the Great Escape.

“We know what can happen in football and this is a platform for us to kick on now.”

Day admitted that the players were relieved to put a stop to their worst losing run since Flynn took charge in March 2017.

“There’s not been enough clean sheets this season for my liking but it was important that we showed a big reaction from the Mansfield game,” he said.

“I think the lads delivered that reaction and you could see from the start of the game that we started very brightly and we were maybe taking some of that anger out from the Mansfield game.

“Mark [O’Brien] coming in added a bit of no-nonsense defending, which he brings for us, and I think as a back three or a back five we defended well.”

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Day continued: “We wanted to win the game but in the changing room after the game there was a sense of relief that we didn’t lose after the run of games that we’ve had. We needed to stop the rot.

“We’ve got a good week now where we can get some work in on the training ground and it’s a good platform to go again next weekend.”

County are on the road again this weekend as they head to Stoke-on-Trent to take on Port Vale but eight of their final 12 games are at home and Day believes that could be significant.

“We’ve done a fair bit of travelling but that’s part and parcel of playing professional football so I don’t think we can ever use that as an excuse,” he added.

“You just get on with it but looking at the run-in it is nice to see that there is a swing our way of home games.”