Grimsby Town boss happy with performance at Bristol Rovers but injured players won't be back for Nuneaton clash

PAUL Hurst says there is 'no chance' the injured trio that sat out Saturday's opening 0-0 draw at Bristol Rovers will be available for the visit of Nuneaton tomorrow evening (7.45pm).

With no less than six players unavailable through either suspension or injury at the weekend, the Mariners earned a point from their Conference curtain-raiser at the Memorial Stadium – a result that Hurst later hailed as 'fantastic'.

But as attentions turn to Blundell Park's first game of the league campaign, the Town boss doesn't expect any of those absent stars to be back – barring Toto Nsiala, who will return from suspension.

Hurst says Jon-Paul Pittman, Nathan Arnold and Ross Hannah will not recover from the injuries that ruled them out of the clash in the West Country.

Meanwhile, Shaun Pearson will serve the final game of his ban – with Scott Neilson also missing for the next two.

"There's no chance of any of the injured lads being okay for Tuesday – that's the quick answer," the boss said.

"We'll obviously get Toto back from suspension, but that's another decision for me to make because I thought we defended extremely well on Saturday.

"Ross is a hard one to judge at this moment in time, but with the other two, we've spoken about the Dover game being a possibility, but tomorrow night is most definitely out of the question."

On the draw with bookies' favourites Bristol, Hurst (pictured) added: "Given the circumstances, I believe it was a cracking point for us against Bristol.

"We took a good following down there and I want them to be sure that we didn't go down there just for a point – and hopefully they saw that.

"We went 4-4-2, even though it would have been very easy for me to go 4-5-1 with the options available to me.

"But we wanted to be positive because I always felt we could cause them some problems – and we did.

"It was nice to put on a solid display and get off the mark, but we move on very quickly to Nuneaton and hopefully we can get our home campaign off to a positive start tomorrow night at Blundell Park."