Sean McGurk’s difficult summer is continuing as his mysterious injury struggles continue to hamper his recovery and return to the Swindon Town team.

Following a very exciting start to his Swindon career with goals and top performances against Gillingham and Tranmere Rovers, McGurk has struggled with fitness concerns and playing time since and was left out of squads by Gavin Gunning towards the end of last season.

The 21-year-old returned for the first game of pre-season against Swindon Supermarine and played 45 minutes after a summer spent preparing himself for the rigours of senior football, but he has been out since then with a hip flexor problem.

Having missed the rest of pre-season, Mark Kennedy said last week that he had started getting involved in the entirety of training sessions, although predominantly in a non-contact capacity, as he was getting closer to making a return to competitive action.

However, when asked for an update on the attacker ahead of Town’s trip to Crewe Alexandra this weekend, Kennedy said that McGurk had not been making the progress that had been expected last week.

He said: “Sean's situation is quite frustrating for him as he seems to have very little wrong with him but enough to keep him out of training, so that has been particularly frustrating for myself and him.

“He is a talented young boy and I don’t want to be vague and say I am not quite sure what is wrong because he literally has very little wrong with him but it is enough to keep irritating him and keep him out of training.

“That is something that we really need to get on top of and I am sure we will in the next few days because we are at that period where he has been out for too long and it is either that he is injured or he isn’t.

“We need to work out what is the problem that is holding him back, effectively.

“He has been on the grass multiple times, we have load-compromised his training so we are phasing him in, he is doing really low-level stuff and post-training he just doesn’t feel comfortable with where he is at.

“I think certainly in the next week there has to be a decision made on what we are going to do with him because if I was a player then I would be pretty p-ed off by now.”