Colchester United head coach John McGreal said it was a boost to see striker Luke Norris complete 90 minutes on his scoring debut.

Norris, whose pre-season was disrupted by injury, hit the net on his first competitive appearance for the U's last night, in their Carabao Cup defeat at Cheltenham Town.

The former Brentford youngster scored a long-range equaliser with ten minutes remaining at Whaddon Road to take the first-round tie into extra-time.

And although Norris went on to miss in the resultant shoot-out, which the U's lost 6-5 on spot-kicks, boss McGreal was nonetheless happy to see the forward complete the whole game.

McGreal said: “Luke needed the game desperately.

“It was his first 90 minutes since he’s been here and he took a lot of hits, scored a goal and missed a penalty in the shoot-out, so he was heavily involved again.

“I’m sure he’ll be a bit sore but he needed the game and I thought that he put in a good performance."

Norris was one of two Colchester players to miss from the spot in the shoot-out at Cheltenham, with Courtney Senior firing his decisive penalty over to hand victory to the hosts.

However, boss McGreal does not feel the winger will be overly affected by the disappointment of missing his spot-kick.

McGreal said: “I wouldn’t have thought it will be difficult to pick Courtney up.

“He’s a young lad who took a little bit of bottle to go up and take the pen.

“It’s a bit of a lottery and he’ll learn from it.

“The next thing is that when there is another penalty available if we do end up in another shoot-out, we’ll be looking for him to take it so that he can erase that memory."

McGreal made five changes to his starting line-up for the Cheltenham game and admits the performance has given him plenty to think about, ahead of the League Two trip to Mansfield Town this weekend.

Along with Norris, Mikael Mandron, Brandon Comley, Tom Eastman and Aaron Collins all returned to the Colchester side.

McGreal added: “It’s food for thought for Saturday.

“With the shape that we played (against Cheltenham) do we adjust it at Mansfield?

“We’ve got to bridge the gap with Mansfield, because we know that they’re a big team in our league.

“After the (Cheltenham) performance we’ll be a little bit wounded but it’s one that we can analyse and move forward and hopefully put in a much better performance than we did."