Hammer Downes delighted with return

Flynn Downes was happy to be back in action as the Hammers came out victorious in their first pre-season game at Boreham Wood.

The Irons won 4-1 in front of two and a half thousand fans with  goals from Danny Ings and Kamarai Swyer in the first half followed with strikes from Jarrod Bowen and Gideon Kodua in the second.

Downes played almost 80 minutes of action putting in an impressive showing in the heart of midfield less than five days after returning from the off-season.

And afterwards he said: “It has gone so quickly but that’s the game we play. We are back now and we’re working hard. It was good to get out there and enjoy some football. 

“The legs have been better! We’ve been back for four or five days and it’s been really tough, but that’s the nature of pre-season. That’s what we expect. It was nice to play in a game, so it wasn’t just running. We could get on the ball and play a bit of football, which was lovely.”

He added that there is nothing like football fitness saying: It’s the little things like the sharpness, the second balls. It’s those little things that you can’t get in training, that you can’t replicate when you’re running.

“Things like change in direction like you get in games, it’s so different. We need to play as many games as we can and, to be fair, all the boys prefer doing that. It was good.”