Telford rocked by three injuries

Boss Rob Smith was today counting the cost of AFC Telford United's injury triple whammy - and admitted the squad's morale had taken a bashing.The Bucks were held to a 1-1 draw at Gainsborough Trinity on Saturday to leave them five points behind Blue Square North leaders Kettering, who also have a game in hand.

But that only tells half the tale of an afternoon that also saw defenders Stuart Whitehead and Jimmy Turner and striker Gary Birch hobble off in pain.

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Whitehead has now been diagnosed with ankle ligament damage and Smith expects him to be out for six weeks, while Birch has suffered a medial ligament injury and is unlikely to play again this season.

But there was at least brighter news on skipper Turner, who saw the swelling on his ankle go down yesterday, and now has an outside chance of featuring against Nuneaton tomorrow.

On Whitehead, Smith revealed: "We took him home on the coach and his parents picked him up and took him to Redditch Alexandra Hospital where he had an X-ray.

"That showed there is no fracture but he has done ankle ligament damage. We'll get Rudy (Farquharson, the club physio) to have a look at him but, with the amount of pain he's in I'd say it's a six-week injury.

"Stuart was a massive signing for us and it will hurt us a lot to be without him. All the lads are very down, I had a lot of phone calls from them yesterday wanting to know what's going on."

On Birch's situation, he said: "That's definitely medial ligaments and he's in severe pain.

"He can't put any weight on it at all. It's a bad injury and he's had it before - I don't think we'll see him again this season and he's gutted."

The initial fears on Saturday evening were that Turner had also damaged his medial ligaments, but that has thankfully proved not to be the case.