Taye Ashby-Hammond will be out for longer than anticipated despite a successful operation to treat a cartilage tear.

Both Stevenage and parent club Fulham took the decision to cure the nagging injury picked up by the on-loan goalkeeper and Boro boss Steve Evans felt he could be back for the beginning of March.

The one-day, keyhole operation went off without any snags but the post-op advice is to give him a longer recovery.

Evans said: "Taye Ashby-Hammond deserves enormous credit. He's been outstanding for us and he'll be back.

"The good news is he's had his operation and he's on the road to recovery.

"It's probably going to be six to eight weeks rather than four but at least we know what the situation is."

Stevenage's other immediate injury concerns should both be over very soon.

Evans said: "Dan Sweeney should train [Thursday], well he's going to train and we're not expecting any reaction other than a positive.

"Michael Bostwick has been off for a couple of days, just because Michael came in from the moon and suddenly played 90 minutes and was outstanding at Sutton.

"But he's getting older so we've looked after him a little bit but Michael will train.

"Terence Vancooten, we've probably got earmarked for Stockport away on Saturday week.

"He's been a big player for us, he's been brilliant since the start of the season.

"I would call him more like an assassin. He goes about his job in a very quiet-natured manner compared to Sweeney and Carl Piergianni who you hear three miles from the training ground.

"We miss Terence but we don't miss him [as much] when we signed Jonathan Tomkinson.

"We tried as long as we could, we probably took too long to do it, but we tried to get as close on a placement as we could for that central area and we found one with JT."