COLCHESTER United defender Tom Eastman insists he still has plenty more to offer after reaching an impressive milestone.

The U’s centre-back clocked up his 300th career start when he helped his side claim a 1-0 victory at Morecambe, last weekend.

Eastman, who will be hoping to help John McGreal’s side secure a third successive win at Grimsby Town tonight, has registered the vast majority of those appearances for his home-town club Colchester.

The 27-year-old, who is the longest-serving player currently in the U’s squad, says he is always looking to improve.

Eastman told the Gazette: “It doesn’t really feel like 300 games – it goes so fast.

“It was my 27th birthday on Sunday so hopefully, I’ve got many more years left.

“I’m enjoying my football and hopefully, I can keep going.

“I always feel that there’s more to come – I’m still learning under the manager and the stuff we do in training is always different.

“There are always parts of your game that you’ve got to improve.

“You’ve got to try and be as good as you can be.”

Eastman will be hoping to help Colchester register three straight league wins for the first time since April when they take on Grimsby.

The U’s head into the game at Blundell Park knowing that a win could lift them up to second in the League Two table, if other results elsewhere go their way.

“It’s another tough away trip and I’m sure we’d take another 1-0 win right now,” said Eastman, who joined Colchester from Ipswich Town back in May, 2011.

“It was our first win in the north for a while – none of the boys have really talked about that but it’s nice to get it off our backs.

“We said before the game that if we want to have aspirations of automatic promotion and the play-offs then we have to go to places like Morecambe and win games and that’s what we did.

“We got a 1-0 win away from home and a clean sheet, so we were really pleased.

“The game was a bit of a tale of two halves.

“We played really well in the first half, passed out well from the back and scored an unbelievable team goal.

“To be fair to Morecambe, they put us under pressure in the second half and we probably couldn’t play the same way as we played in the first half.

“That’s football in League Two and they obviously weren’t going to let us do that again.

“The boys dug in and held on and we did enough to keep the clean sheet and get the win.”