Winger Stephen Hunt has been ruled out of Town’s Boxing Day trip to Doncaster with the hamstring injury he suffered in training on Friday. The 32-year-old, who signed a contract extension until the end of the season last week, missed Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Watford.
"He’s not involved for Boxing Day,” manager Mick McCarthy confirmed. "But it’s not too bad and he’ll be back quick enough, I think.
"We’ll see [whether he’s OK for Bournemouth on Sunday or Charlton on New Year’s Day], but it’ll probably be New Year’s Day.
"I’m not going to push it, that’s for sure, we’ve got plenty of games left. He was just unfortunate, he just planted his leg and he strained his hammy. We want him back asap but we won’t do anything daft and rush him back.”
Aside from Hunt, midfielder Anthony Wordsworth missed training this morning having been ill for the last few days.
McCarthy has no plans to consider striker Sylvan Ebanks-Blake until the FA Cup match against Preston on January 4th.
Young right-back Elliott Hewitt is still sidelined with the ankle injury which curtailed his loan spell at Gillingham but could be fit again next week when he will rejoin the League One club.
McCarthy says the Town squad will be travelling to Doncaster on Christmas Day afternoon: "We’ll be setting off tomorrow.
"We’ll train in the morning, everybody will get home and have a bit of lunch and then come back here and we get up there for about half-nine or 10 o’clock tomorrow evening.”