Hatters boss reveals star defender was taken off due to sickness at Reading

Luton boss Rob Edwards has allayed any fears over an injury to defender Tom Lockyer, revealing the centre half was substituted due to sickness during last night’s 1-1 draw with Reading.

With 69 minutes on the clock and the visitors trailing 1-0 at the Madejski Stadium, the Welsh international was surprisingly one of the three players withdrawn by the manager, Allan Campbell and Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu also making way.

Lockyer then went straight down the tunnel with a member of Town’s physio team rather than take his place on the bench for the remainder of the match, as it looked like he might have picked up a knock.

However, that wasn’t the case according to Edwards, who said: “We wanted to change the shape, but to be honest he was ill as well.

"Hopefully he won’t mind me saying it, but he was sick a lot at half time and then it’s ‘are you alright Locks?’

"But he was just so desperate to be out there and help the team.

"He wasn’t feeling very well, but we wanted to change it, bring a defender off and get a forward on anyway, so he was the right one to look after and protect.”

Edwards introduced Elijah Adebayo, Luke Berry and Jordan Clark, with Luke Freeman joining the fray shortly afterwards, as both Berry and Adebayo had a huge part to play in Carlton Morris’s equaliser with nine minutes to go.

Having such a strong bench to affect the game puts the Hatters in a strong position going into the play-offs, and is a world away from where Town found themselves at this stage of the season last term, when they were struggling massively for fit players, a number already ruled out for the rest of the campaign.

The Town boss added: “We knew that, you turn around tonight and you think you’ve got some real options there as well that can help us change the game if we need to, either way.

"We’ve just got a couple more now to get back from a defensive point of view which you all know about and then we’re in good shape.”