PHIL Brown has revealed his call to keep Luke McCormick in goal for Saturday’s League Two defeat by Bury came with added bonus of the approval of regular number one Lawrence Vigouroux.

Brown opted to keep the veteran McCormick between the sticks for the visit of the Shakers despite Vigouroux having returned from international duty with Chile, for whom he sat on the bench in a friendly in South Korea last Tuesday.

McCormick had previous kept clean sheets in the away league win at Morecambe and Checkatrade Trophy success at home to Newport County in Vigouroux’s absence and particularly impressed in the former, with the manager keen to see that level of performance rewarded.

Brown sat down with his two goalkeepers on Friday to discuss the situation and revealed that Vigouroux had backed his call to keep McCormick in place.

“I like to reward clean sheets,’’ said the manager. “When you get clean sheets and you get something to admire about defending as a group, as a unit, culminating with the goalkeeper behind them, I like to reward them and that’s the conversation I had with both goalkeepers.

“I did a role reversal on Lawrence Vigouroux and he said he would have made the same decision.

“That doesn’t make it right, he just said he would have made the same decision, coming back from international duty – when you’ve been called up because of your performances.’’

McCormick could hardly be faulted for either of Bury’s two goals in the 2-1 reverse, managing to get a palm on, but not keep out, to Byron Moore’s close-range pile-driver for the opener before being left exposed by his defence for the second-half winner.

Brown added: “It was a real tough decision, no doubt about it, but the (Bury) performance wasn’t anything to do with the goalkeeping selection.

“It was maybe a midfield player playing right-back - and didn’t really settle at that – a front three that was nowhere near as potent as what we have been and a midfield three that didn’t do what I would class as the basics, which is to get the second balls and to play from there.

“They (Bury) had an experienced three in there and they got more second balls than we did, but it was the experience that let us down.’’