Colchester United’s playing staff, many of them laid-low by a mytsery bug/illness at the start of the week, are fighting fit again ahead of this Saturday’s tough trip to Mansfield Town.

Many of the U’s players were feeling a little bit par, health-wise, ahead of Tuesday night’s visit to Cheltenham Town, which ended in a 2-2 draw in the EFL Cup, before the Robins won through to the second round 6-5 on penalties.

“Everyone is more or less fit and well again,” revealed boss John McGreal following today’s press conference at Florence Park, Tiptree.

McGreal continued: “The boys have come back in and trained today. A few are still not 100%, but hopefully they will all have recovered for this weekend.

“They had a day off yesterday, to recover, and they got through today’s training session.

“But no excuses. That’s football. We didn’t play well for the first 30 minutes at Cheltenham, but in the second half we took the game to them.

“Cheltenham scored their second when we were on top, but we showed good resilience to score two quick goals.

“It’s just a shame we were one of nine teams to go out on penalties. The rules had changed, otherwise I felt we could have gone on and won it in extra-time.

“Now we have a tough trip to Mansfield, and we will need to be resilient again if we are to come away with something from this game,” added McGreal.