Players 'played through illness' against Chesterfield as sickness bug again hits Cobblers

Jon Brady has revealed that his squad was again hit by another bout of illness throughout last week and into Saturday’s FA Cup tie against Chesterfield.

Cobblers have already been struck down by a sickness bug once this season when Sam Hoskins, Josh Eppiah and one or two others were forced to miss several matches at the start of October.

Injuries and suspensions have also not helped and with such limited options at his disposal, Brady had no choice but to play the players who were not feeling 100 per cent against Chesterfield.

"In the week building up to the game, we again had some illness running through the squad,” revealed the Town boss on Tuesday. “We were hoping to get opportunities to do some more work on the training pitch but players played with illness on Saturday and those are things which are out of our control and no-one knows about it.

"You look at it, I'm having to put a 19-year-old centre-back on at centre-forward and the opposition are bringing on a quarter of a million pound player (Kabongo Tshimanga). It's just giving a bit of context to the situation.

"But we move on and we have had a good week so far this week and all of us are really looking forward to Gillingham on Saturday."

Reflecting on his side’s 1-0 defeat in the first round at the Technique Stadium, Brady added: "We could have been better. Chesterfield are a good side with good players and you saw that from the way they played.

"We hit the post, we hit the bar and we had other good chances but they score their only real chance. They got down the sides of us and we can defend that better but we did some really good defending in and around our box.

"I felt, personally, that we deserved at least a replay but if you don't take your chances in cup football, that can happen.”