CHRIS Bridges made his critics eat their words by firing Newport IoW to only their second league win of the season at St George's Park on Saturday.

With points hard to come by for the Islanders, Bridges has taken his fair share of flak from the home crowd.

So no one could have been more delighted than manager John Linington when the towering front man popped up with both goals to sink fellow strugglers Whyteleafe 2-0.

"The crowd were still moaning before the game saying certain players shouldn't be out there - and Chris was one of them, so it was great when he scored twice," smiled the boss.

"He's only a young lad whose dad, Colin, used to skipper our reserves.

"I remember when Steve Tate (former Newport manager and striker) first saw him, he thought he had something about him, but Chris's problem is that he's a big lad of 6ft 2in and his body language lets him down.

"He looks slow and sluggish, but he actually works really hard and he was one of our best players at Burgess Hill on Wednesday.

"He doesn't like playing at home and normally does better away."

Bridges's 36th-minute opener was a tap-in after Adam Barsdell had headed down skipper Simon Pilcher's free kick. It ended a barren spell of 464 minutes without a goal for the Islanders.

He got his second on 67 minutes, capitalising on a mistake by defender Danny Edwards and rolling a shot past the advancing keeper from the edge of the box.

Whyteleafe were awarded a late penalty for a Mark Fletcher foul, but Mark Tompkins missed it.

Defender Mark Isaacson is leaving Newport to join Wessex outfit Brockenhurst on a permanent basis after dividing his time between the clubs for the last two seasons.