Midfielder Owen Moxon found himself off the pitch and in the treatment room just before the half-hour on Saturday afternoon after an aerial challenge left him with a nasty gash on the side of his head that required stitches and a hefty bandage.
“Owen had his head stitched and I had to make a decision to take him off while that was happening,” manager Paul Simpson explained. “I couldn’t afford to wait, it was taking far too long, and that’s something I’m going to have to address.
“He’s got a nasty cut on his head and he’s gone away with his head bandaged. I don’t know how many stitches he got, and again that was an innocuous banging of heads. I haven’t seen that one back.
“There was no concussion or anything like that, and no dizziness, it was literally a flesh wound. We’ll see how he is.
“I don’t think there was any malice in it. He now has stitches that are right on his hairline. I thought Jayden Harris was excellent when he came on, he showed fantastic energy, real desire to go and win second balls and make blocks.
“I’m pleased for Jayden, but disappointed Mox had to leave the field. I’m hoping he’ll be fine for Tuesday, even if he has to wear a Terry Butcher style bandage on his head.
“I just saw him in the corridor and he seems fine. He wanted to come back out, and was disappointed when I sent Geoff Haugh down to say take your time now doc, he’s not going back on.
“I really couldn’t afford to wait any longer because it’s too long to be going down to ten men. The sad thing was we then put ourselves in a position where we were playing for 60-odd minutes with ten men after that.”
Returning for the visit of Orient were Fin Back, Kris Dennis and Tobi Sho-Silva.
“We need them, don’t we,” he commented. “Now we’re missing Ryan Edmondson for the next three with his suspension we definitely need Tobi back.
“We’ll wait and see how everybody is, I don’t think we’ve picked up anything else. I thought Fin was outstanding, but he’s been outstanding all season to be fair.
“He got himself into some good areas, probably better when we were down to ten men, I thought he showed great energy and a real purpose about the way he wanted to play. There were lots of good things, lots of really good things that sadly we were all on the losing team in.”
“Another good thing about having Tobi and Kris back is that we are really struggling in the forward areas with the bodies we’ve got,” he added. “I’m really hoping Jack Stretton’s not a bad one and he might have a chance for Tuesday or next Saturday, which will be a real bonus.
“We’ve had to deal with injuries, some of them are just nothing we could do anything about. We could have done something about losing one of our forwards this weekend, who’s going to be suspended.
“But we’ve all just got to take it on the chin and deal with it. There’s no point bleating on about it, it’s happened now, I’m not going to throw my toys out of the pram with Ryan Edmondson because I do think he’s a fantastic player to have in our group, and I’m looking forward to getting him back once he’s done his suspension and it will be a clean slate for him.
“We’ve got to learn, not only in terms of the discipline where we’ve let ourselves down, also in how we play our game, what our strengths are and weaknesses can be, and we make sure we’re better next time.”
The news that Stretton could be ahead of schedule is certainly good for a player who was coming bang into form.
“He’s hoping he’ll be fit this week, but I need to see,” he said. “My focus is on the players who can play, that’s what I worry about on a Saturday, I haven’t even asked about Jack just yet.
“I’ll deal with that now, find out where he’s at, and we’ll see what the week brings. Alongside Jack we have Tobi, and he wanted to have a full week of training, so he’s had that now, done all the work.
“Even when we were at Barrow, he came in and did some extra work, there was a small group worked together. He was confident, he looked strong, he looks fit, he’s a good personality to have around the group, and it’s really important now that we’ve lost Ryan that he’s back with us.”