THE Mariners' sidelined stars are ready, willing and able to return to the Mariners' promotion push at any time.
That's the message from co-manager Rob Scott, after a key quintet watched Town's victory at Woking from the stands on Tuesday night.
The boss says his absent big names are available to slot back into the side whenever they are required.
That could be Saturday's final match of the 'regular' season against Newport County, or next week's play-off semi-finals.
"You look around in the stand and we had Craig Disley, Shaun Pearson, James McKeown, Liam Hearn and Andy Cook all sat there and champing at the bit to come back in," he said.
"Craig is fit and available, and Shaun should be right when we need him.
"Liam was a carrying a sore knee from Friday at Luton, but if we had to get a result at Woking he would have been involved.
"Cooky has had a little bit of shin splints.
"So we need to be wary of that and manage him, and Macca just has a sore toe.
"So again we had six or seven changes from the side that had been playing and a lot of senior players were left out of the squad for various reasons."
Paying tribute to the Mariners' fringe players, Scott added: "We keep challenging the players who are coming into the side to give us something to think about.
"And a few of them gave a performance on Tuesday night where it was better than the previous one, and the one before that.
"That's all we can ask – that we keep moving forwards.
"That breeds confidence and players like Marcus Marshall are coming back to somewhere near where they were before.
"Jamie Devitt has had a busy week with the birth of his child.
"He came back from Ireland late on Monday night and we saw glimpses again of what he can do.
"We still want a bit more from everybody but they're certainly moving up the ladder in terms of confidence levels.
"We've got a good squad going into the last knockings and we'll have to again flip it around for Saturday."
