Gavin Tomlin declares himself fit for Southend United's season opener against Accrington Stanley (From Echo)

Gavin Tomlin declares himself fit for Southend United's season opener against Accrington Stanley

11:00am Friday 17th August 2012 in Blues By Chris Phillips

GAVIN Tomlin has declared himself fit for Southend United’s League Two opener with Accrington Stanley tomorrow.

The 29-year-old attacker missed Tuesday’s Capital One Cup defeat at Peterborough United.

But he is ready to return to action at Roots Hall for his Blues debut this weekend as Paul Sturrock’s side bid to get off to a successful start.

“I trained yesterday and will again today so I’m definitely available for the Accrington game and will hopefully be selected by the manager,” said Tomlin.

“I got an ankle injury which became infected and caused swelling in my groin but I took some pills which settled everything down and I’m really looking forward to getting back out there.”

Tomlin will also be hoping for a repeat of the last time he faced Accrington, back in January.

For that afternoon he scored twice for Gillingham.

And he is gunning for more of the same tomorrow.

“I want goals and plenty of them for Southend as we chase promotion so it would be nice to get another couple of goals on my debut,” said Tomlin.

“The team narrowly missed out on going up last year so hopefully we can go one better this time.

“We’re all excited and raring to go for the start of the season and the last couple of results we’ve had haven’t changed that.

“The mood among us all is still good and we’re confident of doing well.

“Accrington will be a hard start but we if we play well we know we can get the three points.”

However, Blues do have a number of injury concerns ahead of the game with Ryan Cresswell (ankle) and Neil Harris (calf) both face late fitness tests along with Kevan Hurst and Freddy Eastwood who are also not 100 per cent fit.