After playing an hour for the Hatters' reserves in their 3-1 defeat against Ipswich Town on Tuesday, Lewis Emanuel is raring to go to break into Richard Money's first team squad.

The 26-year-old former Bradford man has been out with a broken toe injury and has only featured once for the Town this term and that was back on the opening day of the campaign at AFC Wimbledon.

But after making a welcome return to action against the Blues' second string at Kenilworth Road, the left-footer is going to take every day as it comes as he continues his return to full fitness.

"I'm delighted to be back playing," he said after the totesport.com Combination defeat. "It feels fine and I was pleased to get through the game without any problems.

"It was good to get some minutes under my belt.

"It was my decision to play for an hour. I sat down with the coaching staff where we agreed that we would see how it goes before seeing if it was ok to play a little bit extra.

"I'm concentrating on my fitness and will take every training session and reserve game as it comes."

The awkward knock to his big left toe has limited Emanuel's appearances this season to just the one for the first team.

But he revealed that if it had affected his right toe then it wouldn't have been a problem.

"If it was my right toe I could have been back earlier," he said. "It has affected my balance but I didn't even realised I'd done it at first.

"It was badly bruised to begin with and it went down after a couple of days of ice on it but then I hurt it again in training.

"So I was pleased to get through the reserve game without banging it again and irritating it further."

However, the fragment of broken bone still remains in his toe which still causes him discomfort, but Emanuel is now looking to break into Money's team with competition for places fierce down the left flank.

He said: "Hopefully the injury will heal and it will sort itself out. I want to get back playing as soon as possible but I'm concentrating on my match fitness.

"Once I'm fit I can try and get into the new manager's plans."