CHARLES Smith has been cleared to return to BBL battle for Newcastle Eagles this weekend – but warned he faces a fight for minutes with the club’s young guns.
Smith missed the Sheffield Sharks double-header with a hamstring injury as the Eagles adopted a safety first approach to the fitness of one of their key men.
Sufficiently rested, he will be fit and firing for the visit of the MK Lions to Sport Central on Friday – but with no guarantees that he will walk straight back into the starting five.
Ross Wilson’s performance in the home defeat of the Sharks confirmed his emergence as a key man while Birmingham-born Academy graduate Lamar Morrison has also caught the eye in fits and starts.
Flournoy said: “Charles has been cleared to come back and he will be taking part in training sessions again this week.
“He actually probably could have played in the second game against the Sharks but if we had put him in I think he would have struggled for the next two to three weeks. Hamstring injuries like the one he had tend to be very sensitive and they do take a time to recover from.
“We took a bit of a longer view of the injury. We won the first game against Sheffield and the truth is that the pressure was sort of off us to win that second game because we couldn’t lose the head-to-head by that point.
“So the absolute worse case scenario was that we were level with them but we’d still have Charles to come back this weekend – luckily we won both games and we now have Charles available to come back.
“The thing with Charles is that over the course of the season he’s clearly going to be a very important player for us but of course we have a responsibility to look at the guys who have done well for us in the two games first.”
That means Wilson – just 18 but a precocious talent who has graduated through the ranks for the Eagles – may get further chances to shine before ‘Prince’ Charles makes his comeback.
He sunk a crucial three to clinch last Friday’s win over the Eagles and Flournoy was simply delighted with an intervention that he believes was highly symbolic.
“It was a fantastic performance from Ross and it really sums up everything that this club is about,” the Eagles player-coach said. “I was delighted with him for getting those three points but I was equally as happy because it was the culmination of a whole load of hard work from Paul and Sam (Blake).
“They have been working so hard on the link-up with Northumbria, the link-up with Tyne-Met and here was a kid who has gone through that system who came into a BBL game and made a difference and stole the headlines. It was about everything the club has been trying to do for the last few years and that just gave it an extra edge that really pleased me.”
The Eagles are set to return to work todayafter being granted an unprecedented three days off by their workaholic coach. It was a sign of the faith the New Yorker has in his class of 2011.
“That is the biggest compliment I can pay them,” he said.
“I can’t think of many teams down the years that I have given three days off to. But they definitely earned it with the way they have conducted themselves over the last couple of weeks.”
Meanwhile, the Eagles have been paired with the Sharks again in the BBL semi-final Trophy draw. They will face either Cheshire Jets on Leicester Riders in the last four of the BBL Cup – provided they can get past Glasgow Rocks.
