Talking to the media after Northants compiled 234/0 in response to Glamorgan's 570/8d, new captain Chris Cooke was still optimistic ahead of the remaining two days of play.
With a quickfire 70* from himself and good support from Timm van der Gugten, Cooke declared at lunch on 570/8, but Vasconcelos (125*) and Newton (85*) made the Glamorgan bowlers work hard throughout the afternoon and evening sessions.
"It's quite a placid wicket and they've batted very well" said Cooke "We're still quite a long way ahead and there's a lot of time left in the game, so a couple of early wickets in the morning and you never know.
"It's a really good wicket with the batsmen able to fill our boots in April, but it spun quite a bit for Marnus Labuschagne and it could go up and down.
"De Lange bowled really well on his comeback, he ran in really quickly and he was hitting the gloves hard, but he was unlucky as we put two chances down.
"We felt we had quite a lot of runs (at the declaration) and if we had to bat again in the game that would be ok, it hedged our bets a little bit."