Defender Ben Barclay made a welcome return from his injury frustration on Tuesday night with an hour of football that saw him dust off the cobwebs as he continues to step things up.
“It was good to see him play, he’s another body we can call on,” manager Paul Simpson said. “I thought him and Corey Whelan tried to do it properly, and I thought Luke Plange tried to do it properly.
“Callum [Guy] was the same. It was always the plan that him and Mox were going to share the game. Ben Barclay was always going to come off after 60 minutes because it was his first game back.
“They’ve all come through that ok and we’ve just got to see how everybody is going into the weekend now.”
One real moment of concern was the injury to Sam Collins, who left the pitch on a stretcher with a suspected broken bone.
“It’s one of them things that you call a leg-breaking tackle, and I think there’s a strong possibility that he’s got a broken leg,” the gaffer commented. “It sounded like it when he went in.
“As soon as they were both going for it, I started to wince because I knew it was one of those horrible situations. I don’t think there was any malice from either player, or intent to hurt each other.
“Mox has taken a touch and at the time it looked like another defender was the closest one to come, and this lad’s come from the side. He’s got his foot to the ball first and Mox has tried to just put his foot through it and caught the lad. It’s just horrible for the boy that he’s picked up the injury.
“Mox got caught just below his shin pad, above his ankle. I’ll say it again, I don’t think either player went in to do each other. It was a tackle that on the sideline I was watching thinking ‘no, don’t go for it, just back out’.
“Mox said he couldn’t back out at that point but I told him at 2-0 down with two minutes to go, you do pull out of those sorts of challenges. Unfortunately they’re leg breaking tackles and one person has come out of it on the bad side of that.
“Obviously our thoughts are with him and I hope he gets a speedy recovery from that. That’s the real downer on the whole night.”
