Harding No Nearer Return

Manager Alan Knill has confirmed that midfielder Ben Harding is still no nearer to a first team return after what everybody thought was an innocuous foot injury sustained against York City six weeks ago.

Speaking to the Official Site ahead of the game against Chesterfield tomorrow, the gaffer said that news had been so thin on the player simply because there was still nothing more to say than he was injured, and he’s been injured far longer than anybody expected, so thoughts of him returning this weekend would be wildly wide of the mark sadly.

He also gave an injury update and revealed that Dale Tonge has a knee issue so is now rated as a doubt for the weekend, and Billy Bodin is effectively ruled out of the Chesterfield match but skipper Lee Mansell should return despite missing training earlier in the week.

‘Bodin may train tomorrow with a view to being involved on Saturday, but I’d say it’s 75% against. Ben Harding is unavailable and Mansell didn’t train on Tuesday but he did today. We do have a slight problem with Tonge, he didn’t train yesterday because of a knee injury but we’re hopeful he will train today.’

As for Harding, Knill goes into a bit more detail saying that he is now obviously closer to a return that he was when he first sustained the injury, but the club feel he’s still a few weeks away from a full return.

His actual problem is that the innocuous injury to begin with was actually a torn ligament at the bottom of his foot and that’s a new injury for him in his career so they have treated him with ‘shockwave’ treatment which I’m sure sounds far more exciting than it actually is.

At least folks are getting nearer a return now as we haven’t had the best of luck with injuries so far this campaign.