Matt Taylor has stated that Jack Hunt will get “good opportunities” ahead of Bristol Rovers‘ home game against Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday with the right-back still yet to make a matchday squad this season.
The 33-year-old was a regular fixture in Rovers’ pre-season friendly schedule but picked up a hamstring strain just before the start of the campaign and is yet to feature so far this term.
However, Hunt has been back in training for a couple of weeks but hasn’t been utilised with Taylor stating the defender had to get his minutes up.
Earlier this week, the Gas hosted League Two side Cheltenham Town at The Quarters for a friendly game in order to build up minutes of players who haven’t featured much and the Rovers manager revealed that Hunt was one of the players who featured.
“Yeah, he was involved on Tuesday,” Taylor replied when asked about the latest on the 33-year-old’s situation. “He’ll get good opportunities. We had to get his minutes back up to where they needed to be on the back of a slight injury or a brief injury and then there’s an understanding that we’ve always been a bit lopsided with LT playing on the right, he’s left-footed. No different to Lino [Sousa] who was one of our bright performers last week.
“Hunty played right-back,” the Gas boss added on the friendly itself. “Taylor Moore got minutes but is suspended. Michael Forbes played, Bryant [Bilongo] got some more minutes. Jerry [Lawrence], Jake Garrett, Isaac [Hutchinson] got some good minutes and Shaq [Forde]. Shaq getting a proper start and a proper outing as opposed to an impact moment where you’re chasing something in the game.
“It’s incredible where everyone has been at to get us to this point because, you must be sick of me saying it because I’m sick of saying it myself, too many have had a disjointed pre-season. If we’re in control of everyone’s pre-season then it’s our responsibility but Shaq comes to us in desperate need of game time and match minutes and at the moment we’re throwing him on with the expectation of his best and sharpest version when actually he’s a long way off where that would be. We have to almost go through him getting there for him to get there.”
Other young players who have hardly featured if at all this season such as Dan Ellison and Micah Anthony also played in Tuesday’s friendly with both subject to being made available for loan moves should the right club present itself.
However, not to suggest that the duo specifically will feature in League One soon, but after a relatively calm early fixture schedule in terms of not yet having a midweek league fixtures, Rovers will now face an incredibly busy month with their squad depth set to play a major part in getting them through this hectic period.
The Gas play two games within four days against Wycombe this Saturday and Charlton Athletic next Tuesday evening before heading to Burton Albion (October 5) and Swindon Town in the EFL Trophy (October 8) in quick succession. The home game against Blackpool is still subject to postponement amid the October international break but across all competitions Rovers could play as many as nine matches within one month.
Thankfully, Taylor’s squad seems to be in a good place with only Chris Martin and Joel Senior’s longer-term issues the major injuries within the squad while Moore will see out the rest of his suspension against Wycombe and Charlton before being back available for next weekend’s trip to Burton.
Although the Rovers boss has often deployed the maximum five substitutions this season, there are still a number of players who are yet to start a league game and/or have seen the vast majority of their limited minutes so far come from the bench. Therefore, being able to arrange friendlies with local sides in order to give players who have been on the fringes minutes, especially considering the Gas have no development squad, has been extremely welcome indeed.
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“It’s massive for us especially because, I guess the irony is we are a development squad with so many young players but we’ve not got the squad or the resources or the facilities as yet to have a separate squad that could almost have a fixture list where you can actually drop pros down into it,” Taylor exclaimed when asked about the importance of these friendlies.
“That would be the best-case scenario and that’s probably what we’re working towards when the training ground and everything comes into fruition further down the line. So then, if that’s not possible then we’ve got to make the most of it and games against local opposition will give us the opportunity to do that.
“We knew where some players were at going into the game but the actual outcome has still got a lot more to be improved on for those players that I mentioned who played that game on Tuesday. It was a game against a Cheltenham team who had probably four, five senior pros in it and the rest were younger ones and we were probably the opposite where we had more senior pros. So you would expect a slightly different outcome.
“Now those games are always difficult but you’re motivation is to get close to the first team and closer to the first team pitch on a more consistent basis so I was pleased we got that and we’ll be looking forward to having more of those games over the course of this season. Difficult in amongst our fixture list and other teams’ but they’re so worthwhile, not just for the ones within our first team squad per say but the ones that might need to go out on loan, we invite as many managers down to watch it as we possibly can and hopefully there’ll be loan moves for a couple of the young ones soon.”
On the opportunities some of those players involved might face over the coming weeks amid such a hectic schedule, the Rovers manager added: “Monstrous. Three games a week for the next couple of weeks so opportunity will come and keep on coming. We spoke about how you take or approach opportunity is absolutely everything with a view to be in and around the team and stay in and around the team. But when fixtures come, situations arise in terms of suspension and form and fitness. Everyone’s got to be ready to affect it.
“We’re looking forward to what comes in the next couple of weeks but I think the most important thing is picking up points. We’ve not done that well enough in the last three games. We felt the Barnsley game could have gone either way whereas the last two games there’s been too much where it’s not been quite right in terms of the actual performance. But then to be actually sat here on the back of our best half an hour of football despite losing the game.”