Stoke City captain Ryan Shawcross has stepped up his rehab from back surgery.

Shawcross came through 45 minutes of under-21s football on Wednesday.

The centre-back made his first appearance since the summer operation - which he underwent in a bid to clear up a long-standing problem - when he played the first half of the development team's 1-1 draw at Port Vale.

And Shawcross told The Sentinel: "It was always planned to play 45 minutes. I've got a few niggles just from coming back so I need to let them settle down and hopefully I can kick on again next week.

"I felt good. It's just a case of building on it now. Hopefully next week I can get a 70-minute game in and then move on to a full game in the coming weeks.

"It's up to the manager (Mark Hughes) to see when I can get back involved. I haven't trained with the first team yet so I'll look forward to doing that.

"But I will stay with the under-21s for probably another week or so. It's all about game time and then we'll see after that. At the moment I'm trying to make sure I get the right minutes and the training between them is right."