Return date of Peterborough United defender still up in the air as injury issues persist

The Posh centre-back, and last season’s club captain, limped off a match in pre-season 2025/26 and has not been seen on the pitch since. His last competitive match came in April 2025.

There were hopes that he would feature in Posh’s opening match of the season against Bristol Rovers in the EFL Cup after he was declared “fit” and “ready” but Posh boss Luke Williams and chairman Darragh MacAnthony but he did not feature in the squad, with Tom O’Connor and David Okagbue lining up from the start.

After the match, Williams confirmed that Hughes was still suffering with pain when ramping up the intensity of his training.

Williams said: “He’s getting some pain so we just want to be sure that nothing is going on in there. Sometimes pain is a message from the body and other times its because the body is not used to doing the type of things it’s doing. We have to get to the bottom of that and it’s not fair to take a chance with Sam.

“We just have to understand that his body has been through so much that now he’s ramping up the volume of training, he’s starting to feel some aches and pains. We just have to be very careful now.”

Tom O’Connor was passed fit to appear for the first time as a permanent Posh player and made it through 45 minutes before a planned change at the break saw Lucca Mendonca replace him. He had not appeared in any match since January 17, and missed all of pre-season, with a hamstring injury that cut short his loan spell from Wrexham last season.

Williams was pleased with his progress. He said: “I’m so pleased to see Tom back on the pitch because he has worked so hard and we know he is going to be a really important player for us. That’s a massive day for our squad.

We already had that change prepared before the game and we really like Lucca on the pitch as well so it was a win-win getting the minutes into Tom and we also got more minutes into a young player.”