KWAME THOMAS has taken another big step in his comeback from a serious injury.

The striker scored nine goals last season before rupturing his left Achilles in training the day before Wrexham were due to face Notts County over the Easter weekend

Having recently returned to training, Thomas, who penned a new one-year deal over the summer, played his first in-house practice game yesterday.

Reds’ boss Phil Parkinson was delighted the frontman completed the hour-long match.

“Kwame has had a long road and it has been tough for him,” said Parkinson.

“Especially having pre-season where we weren’t able to sort out our physio situation but we were able to rectify that by getting him his work at St George’s Park.

“He has been training with us for a couple of weeks and yesterday we had a 60 minute practice game.

“That was his first practice game and he played all of it.

“We will look at him and see if he is okay but he handled the pace of the game no problem.”

Parkinson would not set a timeframe on when Thomas will be made available for selection to boost Wrexham’s promotion challenge.

“The idea is to get as many players available for the Christmas period as possible,” said Parkinson.

“Dior Angus has had a problem with his knee so hopefully there is no reaction to that.

“We have got a couple of other lads who have been playing with on-going issues but hopefully nothing too serious.”

Parkinson stressed the important of holding practice matches to help players like Thomas who are coming back from injury lay-offs before being considered for first team action.

“We have got players back in training this week,” said Parkinson.

“I keep stressing to everybody in the squad that the training standards and the practice games are so important that we get that physical data up to where we know it needs to be to prepare them for when players are called upon.

“Reece Hall-Johnson is a great example of that. He was out for seven or eight weeks and we got him up to speed in in-house games, he put the work in and by the time we got to Aldershot he was ready.

“The practice game yesterday was in terrible weather conditions but the application of everybody, supplemented with the youngsters, was very good.”

Wrexham are back in action on Saturday against Weymouth at The Racecourse with the game being televised live by BT Sport.

Saturday’s 1-0 victory over Dover, on the back of a first home defeat of the season against Yeovil, enabled Wrexham to climb up to fourth place in the National League and Parkinson is looking to build on that win.

“The Dover win was an important one for us, bouncing back after the defeat to Yeovil, and it has got us in a good position,” said Parkinson.

“Now we go into the weekend’s fixture looking to build on that and just make sure that we are within touching distance of the top.

“That’s where we want to be and the lads’ application has been very good.”