Lightning doesn’t often strike twice, but Motherwell caretaker boss Stephen Frail is counting the cost of two goalkeepers who have been injured in the exact same way.
Frail had never heard of a goalkeeper breaking a thumb after being kicked by a team-mate, until it happened to both Aston Oxborough and Archie Mair.
Mair was brought up on a loan deal from Norwich City to cover for Oxborough, who fractured his digit at the same time that understudy Krisztian Hegyi was recalled from his loan spell by West Ham.
Matty Connelly has been brought back temporarily from his loan at Lowland League leaders East Kilbride, and Ellery Balcombe is on loan from Brentford for the rest of this term.
But Mair is back down south, having gone under the knife this week.
Frail said: “Archie’s had surgery on Tuesday, so we’ll just be looking at how long the prognosis will be for that. Hopefully it won’t be too long.
“I don’t know if the injury was the exact same, but he picked it up the exact same way, a kick on the hand.
“The same thing that happened to Aston in the Kilmarnock game happened to Archie in a training session two days after we brought him into the club.
“So there’s that wee bit of misfortune as well. We’ve had a wee bit of bad luck with injuries and I think that [highlights it].
“I’ve never heard of that injury before, your own player kicking the goalkeeper’s hand, but it has happened twice in as many days.”