Shropshire Star

Josh Laurent hopes goals will flow after opening his Shrewsbury Town account for the season

Shrewsbury Town FA Cup goalscorer Josh Laurent hopes the goals will begin to flow more freely after opening his account for the season in his favourite competition.

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The Town midfielder has an affinity with the FA Cup and helped Sam Ricketts' side to book a first round replay date at Bradford City with an equaliser against the Bantams on Saturday.

It was Laurent's fifth goal in Town colours and three have come in the oldest Cup competition in football, following on from memorable strikes at Stoke and Wolves in last season's run to the fourth round.

Laurent, 24, said: "The first is always important to score. Last season after January I got three in quite quick succession.

"You get more confident in front of goal and you take more shots on. Hopefully they'll start flying in.

"It's about time (scoring)! It's been a while. I seem to only like FA Cup goals. Hopefully they keep coming.

"I don't know what it is about the FA Cup. The body just seems to work well with it.

"It was a good move and we said at half-time whenever we move the ball quickly they couldn't live with us and that's where the goal came from.

"It was a good cross and cut back from Scotty (Golbourne), we just needed some more of that in the final third."

The midfielder continued: "We're disappointed but we've got to take the positives.

"We were disappointed with the start we had but we worked hard to get back into the game.

"It was end-to-end but we'll go again in the replay."

Town and Bradford will do battle again at Valley Parade a week on Tuesday after the international break where Town are likely to be without Aaron Pierre, Omar Beckles and Ollie Norburn, all of whom have been called up to Grenada.

Shrewsbury faced replays in three of the four FA Cup rounds they contested last season.

Laurent added: "A replay is not ideal, another Tuesday game. We had a lot last year and it takes it out of the body but we want to go on another good Cup run."