Two goals in 10 appearances is not a bad return at all from left back Nick Anderton, having admitted himself when he joined the club midway through the January transfer window that he felt he had something to prove, having had to battle back from a frustrating injury spell through his time with previous club Blackpool.
Setting all of that aside, his first duty in a blue shirt was to play 65 minutes of a reserve game against the Tangerines, before he then went on to stake a real claim for the left-sided defensive slot, with solid performances backed up by a couple of half-decent finishes.
Having set off on the first few months of his 18-month contract in exactly the way he intended, he spoke to us this week about how the frustration of not being able to carry that work on is nowhere near as important as the need to do what’s right to help to combat the spread of this awful disease.
“What’s going on at the moment isn’t easy for anyone, but it’s important that we all do our bit and stay at home,” he insisted. “It’s obvious that people want to talk to footballers and people in jobs like this about how we’re coping, that’s completely understandable, but whatever we’re feeling is nothing compared to the important work so many are doing.
“Key workers across the country and the NHS staff and its supporters deserve our thanks and it’s brilliant to see so many doing just that on social media and with the public show of support last night.”
But, prodding him on the football side of things, he admitted: “I think it’s the uncertainty that’s really starting to hit home a bit now.
“When everything first happened, we obviously didn’t know how long it was going to be for, and I think we all thought everything would be back to normal in a couple of weeks. It’s obviously much more serious than that, and that’s worrying and tough for us all.
“It’s been frustrating personally because I’ve come to Carlisle and played from the beginning. I’ve built my fitness back up and got a couple of goals, and we’ve picked up some good results to move us 20 points off the bottom spot.
“I’d had a long time out, so I was just really pleased to be back out there playing, but everyone is in the same boat now. That’s why I’m doing everything I can to keep myself ticking over, because I’d worked so hard to get back fit and I don’t want to let that go.”
With the manager having confirmed that personal training programmes had been issued, he spoke more about the daily process of keeping things going as the country remains on lockdown.
“As soon as we were told we weren’t training we were given a training plan from Dave [Waldie],” he explained. “The schedule of it is as close as it can be to what we’d be doing if we were in training.
“We’ve got a run to do every day then a body workout or a core circuit to do. We all have to use an app which records what we’re doing, and we then send in the statistics to Dave so he can keep track of what we’re doing.
“It’s good that we’ve got this, but it is a little bit different to being in training with the lads every day. It’s important that we look after ourselves as well as we can because we don’t know what’s going to happen.
“We don’t know what the schedule will be like if we do end up playing the remaining games. We don’t know if we’ll go straight back into it or have a bit of time, so we’ve got to keep ourselves right.
“I think mentally it’s also good for us all, because we know we’ve got something to do and targets to aim for. As professionals we all like staying fit and looking after ourselves, so it’s not too bad.
“We’re all keeping in touch on our WhatsApp group, we’ve had a few riddles and guess the football team with emojis and all sorts of things like that to keep us sane.
“I’ve been speaking to Dave and Dolly most days, and I’ve spoken to Gav [Skelton] a couple of times as well, but it’s just a waiting game at the moment. We all just have to do what we can and take it from there.”
We’ll have more from Nick over the weekend where we talk about scoring goals with the wrong foot, farming [yes, farming] and settling in to his new club in what are very strange circumstances.