Ryan Noble was delighted to make a scoring return for Sunderland reserves this week.
Noble, who is an England under-19 international, has missed four months of the season since sustaining a stress fracture of his back earlier in the campaign.
"I felt fantastic out there - I've been out for four months so just to get some playing time under my belt was brilliant," the England U19 striker told safc.com.
"I've been training for a week now and it's good to get back out on the pitch instead of watching from the sidelines.
"It's been a long road with a couple of setbacks along the way, but hopefully everything's been put right now and I can just look to the future.
"I'm taking it game by game, but the more goals I can score the better."
