Exeter City travel to Blundell Park on Saturday to face Grimsby Town in the opening weekend of 2026/27 Sky Bet League Two action, an occasion Jake Doyle-Hayes is hotly anticipating.
Monday night's Carabao Cup Devon Derby at Home Park saw Jake Doyle-Hayes feature in the starting lineup for the first time since February following an ankle injury. Jake spoke of his return to the pitch "I think the manager and the staff are trying to help me as best as I can. Coming back from an injury, you obviously want to play as many minutes as you can, so I suppose I'm getting back to full fitness."
Two late goals buried City's Carabao Cup hopes, with Jake providing us with his reaction to the result: "I think initially it's a big disappointment; you want to go out and win the game for us and for the fans, for the City. But I think there's some positives, we were in the game for long periods of the game. But yeah, we need to really focus on Grimsby now. We had a couple of days to sort of think about that game and what we should have done and what we have to do better."
The Grecians begin the league season with one of the longest away trips of the calendar, though Jake doesn't want to hear any excuses about the 600+ mile round trip: " think if you play for the club, you know that you're going to be traveling quite a lot so I don't think that's an excuse for us. I think, we're ready to go, we've looked sharp in training so far and I think everyone is onboard with the manager's game plan and what we want to do."
Hear more from Jake below on Grecian+