On behalf of Colchester United fans........

[Camul]

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for the concerns you have shown over the injury to Tom Bender. I would also like to thank the fans who have come on to your forum from other clubs expressing their good wishes. It is always great to see and, on occasions like this, one of the very best aspects of football.

As you can imagine we were also deeply concerned at our end especially as lots of rumours flew all over Twitter and clearly it is not very healthy to be out cold for that length of time.

Hopefully the news seems a great deal better and I'm sure we all look forward to seeing him back on the field as soon as possible. Tom is a lovely lad and much liked our end as well and the original reports certainly cast a dark cloud over North Essex.

We had a similar and equally concerning incident in a friendly against Ipswich pre season (also a collision with his own keeper and made a tad worrying by the ambulance driving on to the pitch and an Air Ambulance being requested) and that game was also abandoned and quite rightly so. When it looks as serious as both of these obviously did I think that is the correct decision. As usual on these occasions a big thank you also to the club doctor, physio and the paramedics involved.

Hopefully it is all good news from now on for both of us.

It was nice to see in one report that both sets of supporters clapped him off when he was carried away so once again thanks to all of you, to the Tranmere fans, and all those who have wished him well.

[LongLostSon]

and thanks to He who answered all the prayers that went up for Tom that night.

[smudgie]

The amount of messages from other clubs was staggering.

Football family at its very best.