Setback for McCormack as he suffers calf injury

Hatters midfielder Alan McCormack has suffered a setback in his bid to return to first team action for the Hatters.
Hatters midfielder Alan McCormackHatters midfielder Alan McCormack
Hatters midfielder Alan McCormack

The 33-year-old had been pencilled in to feature in last night’s Checkatrade Trophy tie with West Ham United U21s, but wasn’t in the starting line-up, with Kavan Cotter taking his place.

McCormack has now been missing since the 2-1 win at Wycombe on September 16 and on his absence, boss Nathan Jones said: “He would have been (involved), it’s just last week he tweaked his calf slightly in our session, so I was disappointed as that sets him back a little week.

“He’d been training for two and a half weeks and we were waiting for this game to earmark for him to give him a good 60 minutes, because it would be wrong to put him into a first team game and then expect him to be at the levels he’s set, so that was disappointing.”

Some good news for Town fans was striker James Collins going through a vigorous warm up before the match, while attacker Harry Cornick could be fit for Saturday’s home clash with Notts County, as Jones added: “Harry picked up a minor strain, so this game just came a little bit too soon.

“He’ll train all week with us and hopefully be available for the weekend.”

Meanwhile, Jones has no other injury concerns after making 11 changes to his side for the 4-0 win over the Hammers, ensuring all the players who featured against Gateshead on Sunday got a full rest.

He added: “We’ve got the squad and we took a lot of planning this week as there’s three big games.

“We didn’t change the game from Tuesday, as we knew we were strong enough to be able to compete.

“I had a strong bench in case we needed to and there was a time where we thought, could we bring maybe Olly (Lee) on or Glen (Rea) on?

“But we managed to get another foothold in the game as they had a little spell where we didn’t really get to grips with it, a 10 minute spell.

“Then once we scored the third, we took control back, but it took a lot of planning this week as people can’t do 90, 90, 90.

“So we kept most people on, we looked after the Lee brothers as we thought they might play some part, but as it was, we didn’t have to use them.

“So we’ve got pretty much a fresh squad, four days training and preparation for Saturday, so everyone should be competitive, ready for the weekend.”