Healing Up

ARGYLE captain Luke McCormick believes that the easing of the Pilgrims’ injury problems will help them in the second half of the Sky Bet League One season.

Luke, striker Ryan Taylor and midfielder Oscar Threlkeld all returned to first-team action this week after long lay-offs, which meant that six of the Argyle squad did not make the travelling party to Yorkshire for Saturday’s Emirates FA Cup tie at Bradford City. 

Although they lost the second-round match 3-1, Luke feels the Pilgrims are in good shape as they embark on a busy run of league game through December and January, not least of all because his own return signals an end to the Pilgrims’ peculiar game of rush goalies. 

“Hopefully we’ve seen the back of it all now and there will be a little bit of continuity between the sticks,” said Luke, after the game. 

“We’re getting our strength back and our competition for places back: Ryan Taylor was able to come off the bench today – it’s great to see him back, and Oscar. 

“That competition which we had at the start of the season – people vying for places in the team – is slowly coming back, and that will help us going into the busy period over Christmas. 

“With that competition, we’ll only improve. 

“The character we’ve shown today....alright, we’ve conceded a couple of bad goals but it didn’t seem to affect us – we still wanted the ball, still wanted to go forward and create chances – I think that says a lot about us. If we continue with that mentality over the Christmas period, I think we will be alright. 

“We need to use this performance to base other performances on coming up because, if we keep playing like this, we will win a lot more games than we will lose. 

“I’m really looking forward to being a part of it. It’s a chance for us to roll up our sleeves and tackle the Christmas period head on."