Injuries hit hard in FA Cup exit

Downham Town manager Dale Stokes admits his side are “down to the bare bones” after the club’s FA Cup exit at higher-league Ipswich Wanderers.Stokes was forced to name himself and assistant boss Danny White on the bench for the preliminary round tie in Suffolk.And White ended up playing 75 minutes in the heart of the Downham defence after Owen Gilbert suffered a bad injury during the 3-1 defeat.It was a case of putting square pegs in round holes as White partnered Jake Miller, who was already playing out of position himself, at centre-back.Stokes said: “We’ve gone over to Ipswich Wanderers with 12 players unavailable, including five centre-backs and we’ve had enough chances to win the game.”The scoreline certainly flattered them in my opinion. Availability was so poor that Danny (White) and I made up two-thirds of the bench.”Owen Gilbert then suffered a bad injury after 15 minutes and had to come off. So that was six out of six centre-backs missing, which is just extremely unfortunate and I’ve never known a situation like it. “We’ve always had issues in August, apart from last season, but this is madness. to have six centre-backs now unavailable and 13 players in total, It’s crazy. “You can deal with four or five as it’s going to happen. You can also deal with one or two from certain areas of the pitch but when it’s all of your centre backs and that’s such a key area, it makes everything so much harder.”The Downham boss felt his players did the club proud on Saturday.”To go over to a step 4 side and perform how we did, match them throughout, they deserve huge credit, because to be honest, result wise it could have been different,” said Stokes. “In possession, we’ve played some really good football and caused them plenty of problems.”On another day we could quite easily have turned it around with the positions we got ourselves into, we just didn’t capitalise on it. “Looking back at the goals we conceded, I don’t think two of them happen if we have an experienced or settled back four.”We had a great chance to level at 1-0 down and if that goes in then who knows what happens. “All in all, despite losing, we were pleased with what we saw. In the second half, we had several opportunities but we just weren’t clinical enough when it mattered.”Downham, who just missed out on reaching the play-offs last season, are still looking for their first point of the campaign.And Stokes has re-emphasised the problems he has with a shortage of squad numbers heading into Saturday’s Thurlow Nunn Premier Division clash at Cornard United.”It’s been a tricky month for us player wise, the boys are giving everything and staying positive, but I feel it’s important to put some context on it,” he said. “We’ve learnt in previous years how important it is to have a settled back four and some stability. We’ve now had a different centre-back pairing in all four games this season, which has included six different players. It’s such a key area of the pitch and the foundation for everything.”If you look at last season, we had the same XI for the first seven games and that was huge in terms of momentum and understanding each other, working as a unit.”Unfortunately we are quite the opposite this time around and it’s a new team every game. Hopefully, we get two or three back for Cornard and we can start moving forward with the season.”The players understand the situation and the ones I’ve had have been brilliant.”Realistically we are looking at September before the majority are back with us, but we do need to kick on soon.”