Players are on the mend for Rovers
make the bench at the weekend, so players are coming back but then we have to take into account the time they’ve missed and the training load they’ve missed.
“We’re looking forward to having a stronger group. I’m glad Sam Finley got through the minutes that he did. Connor Taylor, Luca Hoole to a certain extent, so there’s strength there but it’s got to show more in performances.”
On the topic of hamstring injuries, there was an another positive update on Luke Thomas after the winger was surprisingly absent from the matchday squad last weekend, with Rovers boss Taylor, pictured, revealing that he had picked up a hamstring problem in training.
Having had the initial scan, the fear was that the 25-year-old would miss around a month of action, but a second scan on the day of the Derby game revealed that the injury was not as serious as first feared.
In a way, that makes the upcoming break due to international call-ups quite helpful as it means the forward, who has been a major asset for Rovers this season, will not miss as many games, with a return for one of the Easter games against Port Vale or Shrewsbury understood to be the target.
On Thomas, Taylor declared: “It’s been a constant theme where people threaten to become good players and perform and have good availability and then something sets us back. It’s a real shame for Luke, but we don’t think it’s as bad as it could be.
“It will only be a couple of weeks. He’s had a secondary scan and that showed a good result on the back of it, so hopefully we’ll get this week out of the way and then have the break with the international call-ups.
“He did it in training,” the Pirates boss added. “It is what it is. It’s so strange because we’ve had himself and Brandon who are almost, not carrying on with sessions, but just feeling a bit of tightness, and all of a sudden it’s a three or four week job and Brandon’s turned into six weeks when you think that they might miss a couple of days training with a tight hamstring.
“We’ve got to investigate a few bits with our training loads, but the bottom line is that, I use that word ‘fragility’ for the squad. It’s a physical one first and too many of our players have been unavailable for too long. Consistency is impossible with our injury record.”