Daryl McMahon has said striker Bradley Bubb’s recovery starts right now after the injured Fleet forward had an operation on his injured achilles earlier this week.

“He’s had surgery yesterday, I spoke to him and he’s in good spirits,” McMahon told FleetOnline. “He’s on the mend starting from now. It’s his first day of getting himself back to health so it’ll be a long road for him but he’s got people around him and the likes of Aaron McLean who’s had a long-term injury, so he can give him some advice and help him along down that path.”

McLean will also owe his stricken teammate a penalty – being that it was Bubb, somewhat ironically, who stood down his thoughts of a hat-trick to allow McLean to score on his return from injury against Eastbourne Borough at Fleet’s last home game.

Bubb, who limped off at Margate on Easter Monday with a knock that had nothing to do with his current trauma, suffered his achilles injury in training during last week and announcement of it only hours before kick-off at Maidenhead came as a total shock to Fleet supporters.

“We kept it to ourselves,” McMahon admitted. “We knew instantly on Thursday that he’d snapped it. He was running literally with no-one near him, you could hear a little pop and he went down. He turned around to the closest player to him which was Joe Denny and asked if he’d kicked him, but Joe was about 10 yards behind him. We knew instantly it had gone.”

Bubb had netted 16 goals in all competitions from 18 starts and 19 appearances from the bench, an impressive ratio that also sees him leading Fleet’s league goalscoring charts with 14 – and his loss is a big blow as the club head into one and potentially as many as four crucial matches.

“We just have to get on with it,” McMahon said. “Losing these players is a big blow but we had two goals in us from different areas of the pitch last Saturday and that’s one of our main strengths and we play to it.”