Watch more of our videos on Shots!
and live on Freeview channel 276

Higgins admitted that tomorrow night's clash against Sligo Rovers may come too soon for the trio while Cameron Dummigan is not too far away from returning to the squad.

"The first three are getting close, whether or not Friday comes too soon, we'll see," he insisted.

"But the timeframe for a lot of them is very similar and Collie Whelan is looking great and isn't too far away either. So hopefully, all being well, and it isn't always that straight forward as you can have wee hiccups along the way, but we should have good numbers available now over the next few weeks.

Midfielder Adam O'Reilly may feature in Derry City's squad for the St Patrick's Day encounter against Sligo Rovers.

"We're looking forward to seeing Collie playing, but again it will be a building process.

“He is getting closer and he was actually with the specialists this week just to get an overview to see exactly where he's at and then we can assess his progress over the next few weeks.

"We do have a lot of players unavailable at the minute, but I actually don't think we're in a bad place, because a lot of them are very close to being there."

Institute to face in-form Welders at the Brandywell

Kevin McLaughlin (left) and Simon Collins discuss all things Derry City on the Derry Journal weekly podcast 'Talking Derry City: Everywhere We Go', which is available every Wednesday.

With Dummigan, McJannet, Duffy, O’Reilly and now Mark Connolly all picking up hamstring and calf problems so early in the season and in some cases before the campaign got underway, the Limavady native states that the current injury crisis is a bit abnormal, but they have dealt with the situation and have got on with things.

While he wouldn’t get into details of why so many of his players have sustained muscle injuries, he does feel that this season’s squad have dealt with the problems and would be able to cope should a similar crisis occur again.

"There's different reasons for them all, but I'm not going to start to get into it, but there's different reasons," added the Derry boss.

"Obviously we would've liked to minimise it a lot more than that, but at the start of last season we lost good numbers as well, but it's part of football, although this is a bit abnormal,” he conceded.

"However we've dealt with it and we'll continue to deal with it going forward, if it happens again.”

Derry City boss Ruaidhrí Higgins feel trio are progressing well