When I think about New Year football fixtures, hypnosis springs to mind and a big smile crosses my face.

New Year always reminds me of when I was with Town early in my career and we played Swansea away under Neil Warnock.

The match was actually on New Year’s Eve, so we went away to the hotel in Wales on the 30th.

As soon as we got there, the boss said everyone had to assemble for a meal at 7pm and we were then going to have a quiz and a few drinks.

To be honest, we had a few more than we should have, but that was Neil Warnock!

He didn’t mind lads having a drink because he felt it helped them relax and sleep before the game the following day.

We all got into the festive spirit, of course, and I will never forget Dave Wilson, who was our physio at the time, saying he could hypnotise people and inviting some of the lads to be his guinea pigs.

A few of the lads went up and, when it came to Iain Dunn, he pretended to get right into it, just for the laugh.

Willo did his stuff, telling Dunny that the next time he had a drink of water he would think it was 100% alcohol and he would be instantly drunk, but at that stage Dunny cracked up laughing, told Willo it was a load of rubbish and came back to join the lads.

The joke wasn’t over, though, because Dunny went to the bar and, two minutes later, the hotel manager came running through to say one of our players had collapsed!

Dunny was spark out on the floor and Willo, convinced his hypnosis had worked, almost had a heart attack because he thought Dunny was completely under his spell and didn’t know what to do.

We were all in on the joke, of course, and Willo took it all in good spirits in the end.

When it came to the match, I remember I scored and we drew 1-1, but I will never forget that night in the hotel and Warnock’s relaxed attitude to the build-up. That was just his method, and he certainly gave you the feeling you were all in it together.

Another New Year I remember was when Lou Macari was in charge, after I returned here from Sheffield Wednesday, and we were supposed to play Wycombe Wanderers.

We went down to Wycombe and trained at the ground the day before, and it was obvious then that the match was not going to be played because the pitch was frozen.

After training we went back to the hotel, no drinks allowed the day before the game and once we’d eaten, Lou made sure we were all in bed at 10pm with instructions to be up for breakfast by 9am.

When we got down to breakfast, all the training kit was laid out and we wondered what was going on.

Lou had found out the match was postponed the previous night at 6.30pm, but he didn’t tell anyone because he knew we’d all want a drink.

Instead, he took us to a local athletics track on New Year’s Day morning, which was also frozen, and ran us into the ground.

We had already played three matches in seven days, but we weren’t fit enough as far as Lou was concerned, he didn’t want us drinking and so we did that much running until we could barely stand up.

Just shows that two successful managers can have totally different methods – but I know which one I preferred!

Have a great New Year.