Gillingham boss Andy Hessenthaler admits the prospects of keeping goal hero Cody McDonald are slim unless his team get promoted.

McDonald, pictured, who is on loan for the season from Norwich, fired the Gills to victory on Saturday with a brace of goals to see off Aldershot and take his personal tally to 14.

The win lifted the Gills back into the League 2 play-off positions as they remain in the hunt for promotion.

Hessenthaler said: "I would love to think we could keep him beyond the end of the season but we’ll have to wait and see.

"We’ll let him just keep concentrating on scoring goals for us at the moment and we’ll have that conversation later on.

"He will be missed when he goes back, but who knows? It depends on what Norwich do.

"They could go up themselves this year (to the Premier League) and might be thinking differently with players, or they might think, ‘he’s had a good season at Gillingham and he’s now ready for us’.

"Hopefully we can go up and if they are thinking that they might let him go, then us going up can only bode well. Maybe we can attract someone like Cody to stay at the football club because we’ve gone up a division. That’s going to be key."

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