Tonbridge Angels manager Craig Nelson looking forward to getting talisman Sean Shields back from injury after missing opening-day draw with Slough

Craig Nelson is hoping to get Tonbridge talisman Sean Shields back in action as soon as possible.

Shields missed Angels’ goalless draw against Slough on the opening day of the National League South season due to an ongoing cartilage issue in his knee.

Nelson, taking charge of his first competitive game as Tonbridge manager, was aiming to get him involved against the Rebels but the 33-year-old had a setback in training.

“We’ve got to get him reassessed this week,” said Nelson, who takes his side to AFC Totton on Saturday (3pm).

“He should have been able to feature against Slough with what we had planned for him but we are a week out of that, so we’ll see if we can get him some minutes this weekend.

“We’ll have to get him assessed before making that final look at where he is because we had him back in training but he pulled up, which isn’t great, so we don’t know the extent of the injury.

“We might have to get him another scan to check if he’s still in pain.

“It’s a known injury in older players, called old man’s knee, where your cartilage wears away.

“There’s nothing you can really do to fix it apart from strengthen the muscles around it.

“He’s a fit lad, he keeps himself in top shape anyway.

“It’s about managing him.

“Because he hadn’t done much during pre-season, where he was injured at the end of last season, when he did come back, he was still feeling the pain.

“Earlier on it was more precautionary and then when we tried to ramp up his training he was feeling it, so we didn’t make him train as much and just looked more at rehab.

“He got through the bits in Tuesday’s session (two weeks ago) and then on Thursday when we started to ramp up his training, he started to feel the pain again, so we just stopped it.

“We need