Scunthorpe United FC

A decision was made earlier in the week to call off the Iron’s friendly with Alfreton Town on Friday ahead of a week-long pre-season training camp in Obertraun. 

Speaking to iFollow Iron, Daws said: “It’s disappointing for all parties. I spoke to Billy Heath, Alfreton’s manager, earlier in the week to explain we had a situation that would make it difficult for us to fulfil the fixture and he fully understood. We did things in the right way and dealt with it early in the week. 

 

“We’ve got a training camp out of the country and need as many fit players out there as possible. 

 

“We could have gone into the game against Alfreton and pushed some of the lads beyond the number of minutes they should have had - 45 - the same as Winterton and picked up another couple of injuries.”

 

United were missing Funso Ojo and Josh Morris against Winterton Rangers on Saturday, along with the pre-existing injuries of Matt Gilks and Jordan Clarke, while a further three players all picked up knocks in the first warm-up match. 

The Scunthorpe boss gave an update of the current situation, saying: “We’ve had some boys coming back into training today (Wednesday) and some more tomorrow (Thursday), but it would have been too soon to justifiably put them into a game on Friday.

 

“Jordan Clarke has stepped up his training but wouldn’t have been in a position to play until after Austria. Funso unfortunately got a contact injury in training, which means it’ll be a couple of weeks until he resumes full time training. He will still come to Austria with us, step up his recovery and hopefully be back in training in the last couple of weeks of pre-season.

 

“We’ve also had a couple of precautionary withdrawals, just to make sure we protect players. The biggest situation was at Winterton last week, where we picked up three contact injuries. Rory McArdle got a laceration on his heel, meaning he’s not been able to wear a boot until today (Wednesday). Conor Townsend got a dead leg and hopefully he will be back in training towards the end of this week and Duane Holmes has had a slight issue which we’ve again been a little bit cautious with.

 

“What’s most important is the long-term picture. If we stretched our players unnecessarily at this stage, it could put them out for longer and we’d be talking weeks instead of a couple of days.”