MARK Cooper has promised fans travelling to Essex tomorrow that they will see a few more familiar faces in the team than at Deepdale on Saturday.

With just over a week between the Colchester fixture and the play-off first leg it would make sense to give Town’s front line players a run-out with enough time to recover and prepare for next Thursday.

It might upset a few in Essex and irk those in Buckinghamshire further, but Cooper clearly only cares for his team and his team alone, which is hard to argue with.

“There will be first-team players playing tomorrow,” he told the local media.

“The play-off team will have to play in part of one of the games and that team will be going all out to get a performance and a result.

“Whatever other team I pick will be full of players who can get a result.”

That was the sore point for some fans at Deepdale. The Town side that took the field had little chance of getting a result.

Cooper would never admit it, but he would have a hard job convincing anyone he thought the team at Deepdale had a realistic chance at getting a win.

Ahead of the trip to the Colchester Community Stadium, the Town boss was keen to reaffirm his side always aim for three points.

“The teams that we put out are going to try to win games. All I can say is, whichever team we put out, we’re going to try to win the games,” he added.

“We’re not going there to lose and get beat, we’re going to try to win.

“We’re going to pick a team that will have a chance of beating Colchester and will also be a team that will have players in it who are preparing to play in the play-offs.”

It is likely most of the seven players who were excused on Saturday will be back in the side tomorrow. John Swift, who has had a brush with illness, returns.

“He was in a bad way, John, he was in hospital. He had a lumbar puncture to make sure it wasn’t meningitis and he was back in yesterday,” Cooper revealed.

“He’s lost a bit of weight but he’s okay. There are no side-effects to it. It’s just about making sure he’s back.

“He trained yesterday so we’ll see how he trains today before he decided whether he’s fit enough to travel.”

Yaser Kasim and Massimo Luongo are also both likely to feature.

The Swindon Advertiser was not permitted to attend this morning’s pre-match press conference.