Light At The End Of The Tunnel

CARL Fletcher’s Argyle squad is finally recovering from an early season injury crisis.

First-teamers Nick Chadwick, Jamie Lowry, Rhys Griffiths, Paul Wotton, Onismor Bhasera, Rene Gilmartin, Durrell Berry and Paris Cowan-Hall have all spent time in physio Paul Atkinson’s treatment room so far this term but there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel.

“If you don’t jinx it with that question then, yes – fingers crossed, let’s hope so!” said Fletch when asked if he thought he was through the worst of it

“Nick Chadwick and Rhys Griffiths have trained all week this week, and Rene Gilmartin has, too. So that’s really good.

“When you get players back and they come back to training, it gives all the others a lift.

“All the ones that have got injured have been our older, more experienced, players.

“We looked into it, why it was happening and I think not training on the pitch at Home Park might have helped – we’re trying to get that a little bit softer, if we can.

“The drainage is good on it, so it’s difficult.”

Now that his squad has returned to near full strength, Fletch will now have the opportunity to look at arranging a few outs, rather than a few ins.

He said: “With all the injuries coming back, we are, in terms of numbers, not too bad.

“We’ve got some good options around, but, as we’ve seen, you only need a couple of injuries and you’re down to the bare bones again.

“We’ve got three loans at the minute and you can only have five in your match-day squad, so we have to do things wisely and not just rush into things just for the sake of it in case something happens and we have to get a loan for certain areas of the pitch.

“As is stood at the start of the season, we had to have everyone here.

“But there are now players who aren’t going to feature on a regular basis, or who aren’t in our first and foremost plans, so we’ll try and get them out on loan.

“It’ll be a great experience for the young ones and, if they’re older, then they’re not going to want to hang around.”