It was a case of fingers crossed as we waited to speak to manager Paul Simpson after the game on Tuesday night with both Jack Stretton and Corey Whelan having left the pitch with what appeared to be ankle problems.
Sadly it was the worrying response we didn’t want to hear when the update was delivered, with more bad news when it was confirmed that Ben Barclay had been ruled out prior to travelling – also with a suspected ankle twist.
“I had to change the team late on Monday because Ben was going to start, but in one of the last set-plays we practiced in training he went up to head a ball, landed awkwardly and jarred his ankle again. It’s the same injury, but we don’t know how bad it is yet.
“We’re going to send Ben for a scan, I think that was happening today [Tuesday]. I don't honestly believe it's as bad as last time; it certainly didn't seem that way.
“Then there’s Corey Whelan. He was struggling from the weekend but he said he thought he’d be ok. His ankle was sore and stiff, and I made a stupid decision to play him, so that one is my fault. We have to move on, we’ve just got to get on with it and get ourselves ready for the weekend.
“I’ve made a mistake there with Corey, I shouldn’t have played him. But you have these criteria you have to fill to put a team out - who played on Saturday, who's going to play at the weekend, are they from a Cat One academy, all sorts of things.
“With Nic Bollado I made a decision he was going to play, so I didn’t want to bring another younger player into it, which would have meant Ryan Carr and shuffling it around. I made a decision.
“Corey said he wanted to play, I should have been strong enough to say no, you're not going to. I should have left him out, but I’ve got to live with that now.”
Moving on to Jack Stretton, he explained: “That’s a big disappointment for us. He's gone over with absolutely nobody near him and he’s jarred his ankle as well.
“We need to see how he is for the weekend. It’s a case now of dusting ourselves down and seeing how Corey is, how Jack is going to be, and hopefully we haven’t got anybody else injured.
“It was one of those with Jack, there was nobody around him, he put his studs in the ground and went over. There’s a bit of swelling there now so we’ll see how it settles and what it looks like.
“These are strange ones now, players rolling ankles, that's probably four of them. We’re having a little bit of a bad time with them. As we get somebody really flying, as we did with Jack, he goes and does that. We just have to wait and see.”
Also missing from the squad on the night, but close to a return, were Kris Dennis, Fin Back and Tobi Sho-Silva.
“We weren’t looking at Kris Dennis or Fin Back, they weren’t going to be involved,” he confirmed. “This week is about getting them up to above 90% of their high speed, which I believe they’ve both done today.
“We had a group training back at Brunton Park and I believe they’ve come out of it well. I spoke to Tobi to see where his head was at, he wasn’t confident enough to be involved in the game.
“We’re not going to take chances with him, he's been out for a long time. It was my head going a bit too far ahead of myself on that one. I didn’t put any pressure on him.
“He just didn’t feel mentally ready to come into a game. It's important when he's been out for so long to come back when the time is right for him.”
“We do have injuries, it’s annoying for all concerned, but we’ll certainly still get a team out,” he concluded. “I’d like to think they're a team that's going to perform better than we saw here.
“It’s just unfortunate what we’re going through at the moment. I don’t even think it's luck, that doesn't come into it.
“We’ve had a series of unfortunate things - we've had a spell worrying about hamstrings and looking at all the things we're doing in training, in gym work, everything. Now all of a sudden it's ankle injuries.
“I don’t think you can legislate for any of this. I can't even blame the surface because it was fantastic to play on.
“Like I say with Jack, there’s nobody around him, I didn’t even see it happening. I’m only going off what Jack's told me. I’m keeping my fingers crossed it's not a bad one.
“He just said it's sore, there's a bit of swelling on it. It’s really early to say. It's hard to know the full extent until we see how it settles and we'll make a decision whether he needs a scan from there.”