Newark Town manager Tony Joynes is resigned to losing his captain, Ricky Brewer, until at least the spring after the midfielder’s knee scan revealed damage to the ligaments and cartilage.
Brewer has pulled his anterior cruciate ligament and damaged his cartilage and may need an operation on his knee, which would rule him out for the rest of the season. He has been out of action since suffering the injury while playing for RHP Social on October 21.
Joynes said: “It’s a real shame for Ricky who had started the season really well.
“The players who have come in are good enough to cause damage in this league, so injuries and unavailability is no excuse for our recent run.”
Town suffered their fourth defeat in seven games with a 2-0 home loss to mid-table Real United on Saturday.
“It was really disappointing to lose to Real. There was a lack of pace and we missed chances, which was very disappointing to see,” Joynes said.
Town are struggling with a string of injuries with target-man Simon Ellison out with a bad back and utility player James Lloyd struggling with an achilles injury, but Joynes is hoping to have Luke Parsons and Zico Grinion back for the game against Clifton today.
“We need to put in the same effort as we did against Pinxton a few weeks ago because we cannot afford to lose another game this season, going by how previously promoted teams have done,” Joynes said.
“The positive thing is that we are still top and teams around us are taking points off each other all the time, so it is a very close league.”
Town’s biggest challengers for the title look to be Sutton Town who are two points behind the Blues with four games in hand, but Joynes is hoping their backlog of fixtures could work in Newark’s favour.
He said: “We suffered a bit last season from being in all the cups and I’m hoping that a bit of fatigue will creep into Sutton’s players because they have a lot of games to play and it’s not going to be easy for them to win those games.
“We have still got to play Sutton, Bilborough, and Belper so there are some massive games left for us and we’re going to do some serious damage in this league.”
Please note: If this is your first comment on the new system, you are required to verify your email address before your comment will appear.
