John McGreal hailed the impact of Sammie Szmodics after the attacker scored twice in Colchester United's 3-0  friendly win at Braintree Town this afternoon.

Louis Dunne was also on target in the U's win at Cressing Road, which made it five wins out of five without conceding a goal in pre-season for the League Two team.

Szmodics has now scored four times in pre-season for Colchester, much to the delight of McGreal.

U's head coach McGreal said: "We gave Sam the captaincy today and he's thrived on it.

"You can see the strength of his running and the amount of time he got himself into goalscoring areas was countless and he's been rewarded with his two goals.

"When Sam gets there he does finish pretty well to be fair and we're hoping that he can hold this form for the next couple of games and when it starts, in two weeks' time.

"We have six or seven boys in the middle of the pitch but we can only pick three of them, four of them at times - it's competition."

McGreal said their game against National League South side Braintree was a good test for them, with the new League Two season a fortnight away.

"It's a really good workout for us," he added.

"We knew that Braintree would be a bit of a different test and a bit more of a division two game of football.

"They have some good players that we know of and they try to get it in early which is great for us to deal with and you've seen the aspects of our attacking play which was fantastic.

"We cut them open a few times and scored some great goals so over the 90 minutes, it was a great game for us."