FC Halifax Town: Skipper Brown in line to return for Torquay clash, says Wild

The skipper has been absent with an ankle problem he sustained in the 5-2 win over Maidenhead on January 18, missing the last four games.

“He’s fine, he’s back with the squad and ready to go,” said Wild, who will be without Jeff King, who serves the last of his two game league suspension, and the injured Michael Duckworth.

“It’s going to be another tough test,” Wild said of the trip to 15th placed Torquay, who Town beat 2-1 last month at Plainmoor.

“We know they’ll put a lot of balls in our box, they’ve done it twice against us now.

“They’ll really bombard us, but we think we’ve got enough in the tank to combat that.

“If we can hit them on the break like we did down there last time and look to score goals - it was 2-1 but it could have been three or four if we’d taken our chances.

“It’ll be another tough game and another tough pitch we’ll have to combat.”

Town won 2-1 at Torquay in the FA Trophy on January 11, and Wild says that win should give his side belief they can do it again.

“It should do, yeah. We should still be full of confidence and we should go there to try and get a result, and we will. We’ll pick a team to do that,” he said.

“We should be buoyed by the fact we went there and won but we could have won more comfortably down there.

“They could have scored more too, they had two cleared off the line.

“There’s no easy games in this league, but going to Torquay is a really tough fixture for us.”

The Shaymen were given the weekend off when their home game with Sutton was postponed due to Storm Dennis.

“It gave everybody a rare weekend off. It’s been a tough start to the year, they’ve done well, so they deserved a weekend off and we’ve been back at it this week,” said Wild.

When asked if the break had done them good, the Town boss said: “We’ll see on Saturday won’t we!

“ won’t be able to answer that until five o’clock on Saturday.”

But Wild believes his players are chomping at the bit to get back to action.

“Definitely. When I picked the team on Friday for Sutton there were some disappointed people because everybody’s desperate to play,” he said.
“But that’s my job, to pick the strongest team that fit the opposition we’re going to play against and that’s what we’ll do for Saturday’s game.”

On the shoulder injury to Duckworth, Wild said: “He’s got a consultation, and after that we’ll decide about when he can get his operation done.”

The Town boss added: “We did have a couple of knocks and niggles Thursday, Friday, but hopefully that weekend off has given them the time to rest and get back to full fitness.”