Having trained all week, defender Morgan Feeney was set to feature in this afternoon’s squad to face Barrow until a Friday afternoon weather postponement scuppered those plans.
“Morgan is back in training and he’s ok,” gaffer Paul Simpson confirmed. “He would have been ready to play if the game had been on.
“He’s only missed a little bit. He’s done a full week of training, got to maximum speed last week and trained this week.
“He’s back moaning like hell again so he must be fully fit. We’ll monitor him over the next week and make a decision for Northampton as to what the right team will be to play there.”
On the other players in the treatment room, he commented: “We’ve obviously got long termers with Brennan Dickenson and Josh Dixon and they’re still looking at next year.
“We spoke a lot about hamstring injuries, with Omari Patrick still working hard to get back from his. He was due to be back this weekend, but he’s had a little bit of a setback.
“We were doing some work at the end of last week and he just felt a little bit of tightness again. We’re monitoring that so he hasn’t been back out of the grass during that period.
“Like I say, the plan was to have him ready for the middle of December but it doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case. I’ll actually say now it’s not going to be the case.
“The likelihood is that if everything goes to plan it could be the end of the month, or maybe the start of January.
“Obviously with what he brings I am looking forward to having him back and available. He’s our quickest player, and he gives us that threat in behind.
“He was doing really well, but during some one against one work he felt it tighten again. I don’t think it’s too bad, we’ve just got to monitor him.
“Unfortunately with hamstrings they are, once you’ve had it, and if you’re the type of player like Omari who’s very dynamic in his movements, you’re always running the risk of doing it again.
“I spoke to him earlier this week about the fact we’re going to come up with a programme to keep him available for us.
“We need to devise a training regime so that he’s doing the work and getting the strength built up, but not overloading him to the point where he’s going to break down again.
“What you see with Omari that whichever club he’s been at, this hamstring issue keeps coming up. He’s not the only one.
“Lots of players up and down the country are having issues, it’s becoming a real common injury. I read a paper from the Journal of Sports Science where it said that hamstring injuries are 24% of the injuries clubs are dealing with.
“That’s a massively increased number of hamstring injuries from occurrence and reoccurrence, they’re probably one of the most common injuries.
“With all the technology, IT, sports science, nobody can actually give an answer as to why it’s happening. We’re the same as anybody else, pulling our hair out and disappointed that we’ve lost players to it.”
Absent from Brunton Park this week has been Ben Barclay, who is still suffering the initial effects of the ankle injury picked up during the Blackpool reserve game.
“Ben has had a week down in Stockport because he’s in a boot and the first stage of his process is to get rid of the swelling,” he explained. “Once that’s gone he can start ramping up his work.
“We’re hopeful that he’ll be out of the boot today [Friday], I’m waiting to hear confirmation from Stockport about that, then he can come back up with us so that we can start building him up. Hopefully he should be fit for the Christmas programme if all goes well.”
The other long-term injury is Fin Back, who has returned to Nottingham Forest after the surgery he received for his hamstring tear.
“There’s nothing concrete on what is happening with him yet,” he said. “I know we’ve had discussions around it, but I don’t know as yet.
“I know the surgery went really well, and he’s now just going through his rehab. We still don’t expect him to be fit until March at the earliest.
“There will be more conversations with Forest. We made a commitment with them that we would take him on loan for the season.
“Unfortunately he’s got injured, we’re just having discussions to see if there’s anything we can do around the finances to adjust things.
“Forest have been really good with us and they think we’ve been really good with Fin, they’ve been delighted with his progress. I’m sure we can come up with a solution.”
