Jones: All our thoughts are with St Albans after tragic accident

The 71-year-old had fallen when fixing the stand at the club's Clarence Park stadium, which meant Luton's pre-season friendly against the National South side was naturally cancelled.

Jones said: “It was a difficult one today and our thoughts go out to the family of the person who passed away and to everyone at St Albans football club.

“These things are tragic events and all our thoughts from the first team and everyone from Luton Town go out to everyone involved.”

Luton did manage to arrange an alternative friendly, travelling to Hitchin Town and Jones praised their near neighbours for staging the game at the 11th hour, with a competitive Canaries side providing a stern test throughout the 90 minutes.

He continued: “We thank the groundsman and we thank the people of Hitchin football club, they’re good friends of Luton Town here.

"We didn’t expect anything different from them. When we were going to use it as a venue, it was a very difficult subject for St Albans, so they (Hitchin) volunteered to step in and we knew we’d get a very competitive fixture here.

“We could have had an in-house training game, but the psychological aspect of an in house game and an opposition game is totally different, we wanted to play against different opposition and it was a very, very good test.”

Despite ultimately winning 2-0, Jones admitted he had not been overly happy with the first half as Town went in goalless, before strikes from Glen Rea and James Collins gave them breathing space.

He added: “I’m a bit disappointed, especially with our first half performance, but a lot of credit has to be given to Hitchin and how they went about their work.

“That’s why I prefer to do a game like this rather than an in house game amongst us, because they’ll get a psychological test and also a physical one.”