Steve Cotterill gives Shrewsbury players time off after vaccination boost
Manager Steve Cotterill has handed his Shrewsbury players some time off after a tireless win and the squad was vaccinated.
Town put in a season-best half of football to beat Cheltenham 3-1 with 10 men, with Daniel Udoh at the double and David Davis on target after Tom Bloxham’s red card.
The squad also made use of a pop-up vaccination centre as Cotterill instructed his players to receive a second jab or booster vaccine in the dressing room.
The boss revealed there are still players unwilling to have the vaccine, to which he has implored extra care and precaution, but is delighted to see ‘so many lights turn green’ on the vaccination traffic light system Town have adopted.
“This has been a time now I’ve been looking at, probably for the last two-and-a-half weeks, an opportunity after a game where we have a long break, this is the longest break we have,” Cotterill said.
“This was the time. I’m glad I had the booster, I’m glad I was rough for three or four days, I’ve experienced what might happen to the lads. Now is our opportunity to do it.”
He added: “We’ve still got some that don’t want to have it done, we’ve still got them.
“I’ve told them they’ve got to be extra careful, if they weren’t extra careful anyway.”
“They’ve got to be extra careful again with their masks, they’re all sent home with testing kits, they’ve got to keep on top of their testing.
“For those injected now we’re using a traffic light system with our fully vaccinated and those up to date. There’s going to be a lot of lights turning green tonight and I’m delighted with that.
“We’ve still got a couple of ambers, but the ambers we’ve got are young boys who weren’t old enough to have it in the first place, they’ve had a first and got a second in there.”
The EFL last week revealed 25 per cent of players from its three division did not intend to get vaccinated. But Cotterill believes Town will now have some of the highest figures in the Football League.
Asked on whether he will continue to try convince unvaccinated players, Cotterill said: “I don’t know, I’ve just spoke to them again, we haven’t got many.
“The good thing is that our percentage-wise is very, very good. If you’d have said to me at the beginning - and I don’t know what the exact percentage is - other than to say A lot of them have been really receptive, I’m really pleased with that. I wanted us to get to green lights.”
“I think we’ll be one of the more higher percentages, so I’m really pleased.”
Shrews return to training in the middle of the week, and will train Christmas Day, ahead of Boxing Day’s six-pointer at Fleetwood Town.
