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03 january 2002
Happy New Year .

Happy New Year to everyone and I hope everyone had a great Christmas.

Always an odd time for footballers with the games on Boxing day and New Years day forcing players to look after themselves and not pig out too much. We were all given special diet sheets at the club for the Xmas period and I know the lads have been careful over the last week or so, it's just ironic that both the boxing day and New Years day games were called off due to the freezing weather.

Christmas Day wasn't too bad because everyone in the squad came in to train, and went home to enjoy Christmas with their families, so the Boxing Day cancellation wasn't too much of a disruption, but after the game was called on Monday I felt sorry for the lads who had stayed in the hotel, in bed for about 10.30pm no doubt. Not such bad news for myself though, hopefully another game I wont miss.

There was one game played over Christmas against my old team, Preston North End. I still know a few of the players there, Lee Cartwright, Paul McKenna and David Lucas as well as the management team of David Moyes and Kelham O'Hanlan though they were both players when I was there, many moons ago. Our lads were well up for the game after being starved of their Boxing Day fixture and we got a great 3 points and a clean sheet. I thought Jermaine and Shipps played excellent and Jobi McAnuff changed the game when he came on. Shipp's skinhead seemed to work so he's not allowed to grow his hair now.

It was great to see Patrick score too, especially in a game that had a minutes silence for one of his former friends Kurtis Townsend. I only knew Kurtis slightly but he was always smiling and never had a bad word for anyone. I wish his family and friends all the best at this difficult time.

Reports in the paper about the club moving to Kingstonians ground in about 18 months. At least it's closer to Merton than Milton Keynes but I'm not believing anything about this situation anymore. There have been too many stories that haven’t been true in the past.

Also reported is David Nielsen’s departure to Norwich for £200,000, he capped that with another goal for Norwich and I wish him all the best if it's true and he has gone. I was pretty good friends with him here at Wimbledon so hope he does well in his career.

The lads all had a day off Monday, but it's back to normal now preparing for the F.A Cup game on Saturday with Middlesbrough. Let's hope its Deja Vu for us. There’s no new injuries to the squad, but we have a couple of suspensions, JD and KD, I would assume that Peter Hawkins will be a straight swap for Jermaine and Ian Feuer will be in the nets for us. Paul Heald could also be in contention but has only trained about 1 week after breaking his finger before Xmas.

On the injury front, Willo is still a few weeks away by his own admission. The specialist thought that the new break wasn't as bad as the old one but Mark still says he's getting bad pain from it. Blackers is well into running now, not at any real pace yet but it’s always a good sign. Juppy tweaked his groin before Xmas but has rejoined training in the last couple of days, as has Alan Kimble who has been out about 9 weeks, and Kjetil is rumoured to be joining in training fully again next week.

As for myself, I am very close now and actually trained the week before Christmas but had to have a few days off because of the frozen grounds, not the best for someone coming back from an ankle injury. Hopefully I’ll be back involved next week with the reserves, and probably have to play a reserve game in the coming weeks before being considered again.

On the music front now, and things have slowed down over the festive period. I'm still practising the piano like mad to not much avail, and the band is getting together this Thursday to see where we go from here. It'd be great to play again somewhere.

Anyway here’s the play list as promised from the last gig...

Half the World Away - Oasis
Break on Through - Doors
Roadhouse Blues - Doors
Born to be Wild - Steppenwolf
Light my Fire - Doors
She's Electric - Oasis
Creep - Radiohead
Summer of 69' - Bryan Adams
Shake Your Money Maker - Fleetwood Mac
Drugs Don't Work - Verve
Faces - our own song

Hope everyone has a great 2002.

Gareth.

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