Josh Coulson celebrates his 20th birthday today and is expected to start Thursday's televised home match against Oxford United.

The central defensive partnership of Wayne Hatswell and Phil Bolland has restricted Josh to seven league appearances so far this season, but with Hatswell suspended on Thursday the youngster is likely to play alongside Bolland.

The Cherry Hinton youngster broke into the first team last season to start nine league matches and make four further appearances from the bench, and Gary Brabin confirmed that barring injury he will add to his tally on Thursday.

"Josh has done well and he's grown in stature in the last couple of months," he said. "He's played a bit more in the last few games and he's another player who wants to stake a claim.

"I think he's going to play a big part in the final run-in of the season, and if everything goes well in the next couple of days Josh will play on Thursday."

Brabin has taken a keen interest in the scholars, watching them play as CRC in the Ridgeons League when fixtures allow, and added, "When I took the job I said I want to work with the younger players and feed them into the team slowly, which I think we have done.

"I've involved the younger players a lot more than they were last season while still being a top six team pushing for promotion, and we've got young Sam Ives too who's come off the bench a couple of times, so we are trying to build bridges between the youth team and the first team."

But he warned, "We can't get carried away after one or two good performances and go thinking that we can just throw them all in and it will happen automatically. It's a building process that takes time."

[Hatswell Suspended] [Josh Coulson]

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