GOALKEEPER Matt Ingram produced an early Save of The Season candidate just moments after he feared his season might have been over.

The glovesman collapsed in a heap under a heavy duty challenge from Ben Tomlinson during the second half of Saturday’s 2-0 win at Barnet which sent Wanderers to the top of the early League Two table.

Ingram, who suffered a serious knee injury at the end of last season which robbed him of the chance to play at Wembley and take any part in the play-offs,  lay stricken on the turf for a couple of minutes.

He said: “I had a little panic to start with because I felt my knee open up again but it seems to be perfectly fine. The physio had a little look at it but everything seems to be ok.

“Hopefully, mentally that is just what I needed to prove to myself that my knee is perfectly fine because I had been having little doubts.

“In training I had eased myself back in and the knee was always running through my mind. Maybe I wasn’t giving everything because I was still a little bit wary about the knee but slowly, slowly I have been fully at it and coming through this will do me the world of good mentally.  

“When I went down it do go through my mind ‘oh no here we go again’. I panicked and was in a bit of shock because it was the same knee. When I went down my mind was racing, but the moment passed and I calmed myself down.”

Tomlinson caught Ingram on the toe but the impact shot up his leg.

Ingram said: “I felt it open up and obviously that made me panic but it could have happened to anyone. Anyone would have felt the same after that. There’s a little bit of soreness but nothing more than that.”

Ingram, a former John Hampden Grammar School boy, had been in the wars before that when the airborne keeper fell awkwardly after being knocked off balance by an agricultural challenge from John Akinde.

He said: “I’ve got a bit of a dead leg from that one but it’s nothing that a bit of ice can’t cure.”

But the twin blows did not prevent Ingram from plucking out a save from the very top drawer.

Wanderers were clinging on to a slender 1-0 lead at the time and the Bees were launching assault after assault on their goal when Barnet striker Michael Gash threw himself backwards and launched himself into a spectacular overhead kick.

He could have only been eight yards from the goal when his boot struck sweetly with the ball.

But Ingram had seen it coming. He said: “I saw his intention before I saw the ball. I could see he was going to try the overhead kick so I backed off a little bit onto my line to give myself a little bit of time to react to it and luckily I positioned myself in the right area to get a touch on it.

“He hit it quite firmly but I managed to get a big hand there and push it around the post.”

Neither manager, Gareth Ainsworth or Martin Allen, could believe it but Ingram was just delighted to keep the ball out and preserve a second successive clean sheet in the league as he bids to match last season’s tally of 15 shut-outs.

He said: “We got 15 clean sheets last year and I would like to beat that this year. It’s going to be a tough ask, but we’ve made a great start with two in two and I think with the defence in front of me we can repeat it again.”

It was the third match running that Ingram had been performing behind a different defence with injuries forcing manager Ainsworth into shuffling his pack.

Ingram said: “The changes haven’t affected us. I think all the defenders are as strong as each other. Swapping and changing hasn’t affected us, whoever has come in has fitted in.”