Livingston boss David Martindale says the fact he can no longer hear Tom Parkes before he sees him is a huge step forward in the defender's recovery from a knee injury.
The 30-year-old hasn't featured for the Lions since early December and underwent knee surgery in the summer. But the ex-Bristol Rovers man is now off the crutches.
Parkes, who was signed from Exeter City prior to the start of last season, has only been able to feature 11 times for the Lions - but bagged a memorable injury-time winner away to Ross County last term in his league debut.
Martindale, though, is taking a cautious approach on the centre-back's recovery but admitted he's desperate to see him back on he field - even if it has to wait until next season.
He commented: "Tom is off the walking stick and off the knee brace. It’s nice to see him walking about the club without hearing him coming before you saw him. You used to hear the crutches coming along the corridor. Now he is not limping and doesn’t have the knee brace or crutches and it’s nice to see.
"Mentally it’s massive. It’s probably one of the milestones of the recovery process - getting the crutches away, getting the knee brace off. It’s probably another eight to 12 weeks before you look at him properly with a ball at his feet. He has a lot of rehab to do.
"The problem is that he’s old school. He wants to train, he gives it everything. He epitomises everything I want in a football player. The biggest thing is reining him back because he is so desperate to get on the park and play football for Livingston."
He added: "I’m going to be careful with him, this is a boy in his latter years. I won’t fast track him and have a recurrence of this then ruin his career. I will take control of the recovery process with Andy (MacKenzie, physio) rather than let the player push himself.
"He just eats the work up, eats the hard graft. I think we will have to keep the reins on him a bit longer because there is the long-term future of Tom Parkes but I want him playing for me in the Scottish Premiership.
"Whether it’s the end of the season or the beginning of next season, we will probably have some conversations about that over the next 16 weeks."
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