Charlie Mulgrew is contention to lead Rovers out for Saturday’s match with Leeds United.

Mulgrew was forced off in Scotland’s defeat to Israel last week as a precaution with a tight hamstring having scored from the spot to put his country 1-0 up.

The 32-year-old, who missed four Rovers matches last month with a calf problem, was withdrawn from the squad ahead of the friendly against Portugal on Sunday so to return to East Lancashire.

In between, boss Tony Mowbray said his captain phoned him immediately after the game to dilute any concerns over his fitness, with the defender training with the rest of the squad on Thursday.

“Charlie trained today, did everything,” Mowbray said at his pre-match press conference.

“He’s good, to be fair to him that’s his professionalism. He phoned me that night after he came off against Israel after scoring a penalty, he was on the phone to me within an hour and said his hamstring was a bit tight but that he thought he would be okay.

“We managed to get him released from the squad for the second game and he came back.

“He trained today and as long as there’s no reaction he will train tomorrow and then be okay for the weekend.”

Mulgrew was one of four Rovers players away on international duty, with Corry Evans involved in both of Northern Ireland’s Nations League matches, including captaining them in Monday’s defeat to Bosnia in what was his 50th cap.

Defenders Darragh Lenihan and Derrick Williams didn't feature in either of the Republic of Ireland’s matches, and Mowbray admits that was more of a concern than any of his players getting injured.

Mowbray added: “You’re just hopefully your key players come back ready and having done the workload that’s required.

“That’s the biggest fear really, seeing Lenihan and Williams not having had any game-time, ‘how hard did they train, what have they been doing, did they top up if they were only playing small-sided games?’

“All of those are bigger concerns than someone getting injured.

“If you have four or five away and all they’ve been doing is having a kickabout, sitting on the bench and not getting on, that’s not good going in to a game like this weekend which will be intense and hard work.

“Watching them today they all seem fine, we pushed training quite hard today so those players got up to speed pretty quickly.

“We’re all looking forward to this weekend, a huge challenge, but one we should be looking forward to testing ourselves against a team who a lot of the football media are talking about ‘is this the year for Leeds United?”