Club skipper Paul Huntington faces a spell on the sidelines as he nurses a calf injury picked up during midweek.
“He complained of a sore calf after the game on Tuesday,” manager Paul Simpson said. “I didn’t see it at the time, but he did that sprint down the line to celebrate the equaliser [against Peterborough].
“He’s complained of a sore calf, it didn’t feel right for him. It was so sore that we got it scanned and he’s got a small strain in there that is probably going to be three or four weeks.
“Unfortunately at this stage of his career that’s what happens. We’ve just got to get him right, but it’s now about the players we’ve got available to go out and do the job so that we make sure we’re in a good position come next weekend.”
And it’s fellow defender Sam Lavelle who has picked up the skipper duties for the interim period.
“He’s a leader, an absolute leader,” the gaffer commented. “I said that when I spoke to him in the summer - I expect you to be a leader - and he’s now stepping up to that.
“I thought Jon Mellish was outstanding, he has been and is showing a real maturity with his last two performances.
“Everybody has performed, I can’t really pick out a lot of things that went wrong. This is what you have to do, you have to have that level of consistency right through the whole team to be able to earn results. Hopefully it continues.”
For the rest of the squad, recovery will be key with another busy week ahead.
“I thought Alfie was shot to pieces at the end, he was going down with cramp, but even he was getting up there to try to give Gibbo an option for the last goal,” he commented. “They were all suffering. Sam Lavelle had cramp with about 20 minutes to go, Jack Armer did.
“Mox came off because he got a knee in his hamstring, and he felt that was cramping up. What that tells me is that we need to keep working them and making sure we’re more robust and resilient.
“We should be getting cramps every game, we should be working like we have in this game to earn really big three points.
“We’ll look after ourselves, do things properly, and we’ll get ready to go again.”
