Dumbarton boss Jim Duffy admits he’s excited about returning to the touchline – despite the Sons already facing injury worries ahead of the League One restart.
Last week the Scottish Government gave lower league sides the green-light to return to action, with Dumbarton’s first game in 13 weeks set to kick off a hectic run of fixtures from next Saturday (March 20).
However, Duffy’s side might have to do without two players after defender Daniel Church and new signing Joshua Bradley-Hurst picked up injuries whilst training at home during the lockdown.
Duffy told the Lennox: “We have a game to look forward to now so that’s something we have to make sure we’re ready for.
“In an ideal world you’d like the right amount of preparation time but unfortunately these are different circumstances to what would normally be the case. It’s something that myself and all the players are really looking forward to though, because it’s been such a long time.
“Ironically, both Daniel and Joshua have picked up strains when they were doing work on their own.
“That’s before we’ve kicked a ball so it’s a situation we’ll have to look at.
“Joshua went for a scan at the weekend and Daniel tweaked his medial ligament a little bit when he was out running.
“So we’ve signed three players in January on deals until May and two look like missing the restart of the season.
“We couldn’t get together to have a chance to assess them so this is them going to their own doctors.
“So we’ll have to wait and see how they are but I’m delighted to have all three of them on board.
“They’re young players with ability and enthusiasm. They want to do well for Dumbarton.
“They will be good additions but we’ll need to wait and see how they are in a couple of weeks time. Hopefully things will settle down.”
And with a busy run of games, and injuries, Duffy is keen to add to his stretched squad – after defenders Chris Hamilton and Donald Morrison, goalkeeper Kevin Dabrowski and attackers Denny Johnstone and Matthew Reilly all departed the Sons.
Duffy said: “There’s pretty much nothing we could do in regards to adding players over the shutdown because we just didn’t know if we’d be back playing.
“On a general basis we could have a look at players who could be available. The best way to put it would be that we did a bit of homework on possible players for the future. But when that arises we don’t really know.
“We may speak to former managers or teammates and ask about their character and if they would be a good fit for Dumbarton.
“It’s more research rather than having any real thought or knowledge of if it would be something you could do something about.
“We will look to sign and bring in a couple of players to try and strengthen the squad because we will have a number of games in a short period of time.
“No matter how many games we play it will be an intense schedule so I think we need at least a couple of players to try and give the squad a bit of support.
“That’s our task for the next week before the official start date.”
