Mark Kennedy is excited to finally get to work with the “ridiculous” Sean McGurk now that he has recovered from the injury that has plagued his season so far.

After having a very fast start to life as a Swindon player last season, McGurk has had a troubled start to this season missing the vast majority of pre-season with initially a hip flexor problem and then irritable scar tissue.

A combination of those problems meant that he was only able to play 45 minutes during pre-season, the opening friendly against Swindon Supermarine, and made his first appearance of the campaign as an 86th-minute substitute against Newport County before getting a longer run out off the bench against Carlisle United.

 

 

Kennedy said that he was excited by what McGurk had shown in his brief cameos and what he could offer the team moving forward.

He said: “It is really good [to have that option], sadly for Sean and sadly for myself, this was the first time I have really had the opportunity to watch him in a game. I missed his first pre-season game a few months back and then unfortunately he has been injured.

“I thought he did very well and I thought he caused them a lot of problems without having an eye-catching end product at the end of it.

“But it was good to see that he caused problems for them and I thought that he had really good moments in the game, so I was really pleased with Sean today.

“I thought that he looked like somebody that had the ability to unlock doors in tight games and to be a game-changer.”

Kennedy added that it was very useful to have another player who can come off the bench and make an impact for Swindon when they are chasing games.

Having assembled a deeper squad than last season, although it is presently depleted with five players out through injury and suspension, Kennedy has more weapons at his disposal to change games once they have begun.

Aaron Drinan and McGurk were brought off the bench as Swindon looked to get back into the match on Saturday, with Nnamdi Ofoborh, Harrison Minturn and Jake Cain among the other options for various game states.

However, Kennedy did highlight that he felt Harry Smith’s suspension had been a big loss with what he could have added with his aerial presence to turn the tides.

He said: “There are two things to answer your question, one is yes and we said after the game today that Sean could be a huge asset to us in certain situations.

“Especially because mercurially his ability is ridiculous and some of the things he does are amazing.

“The flip side of that is that the one thing I thought we really missed today was the target man, somebody like Harry.

“I thought Harry was a big loss to us today and I thought that was pretty evident but such is life because Harry is suspended and rightly so.”