The Christmas holiday fixtures are always an exciting time in football.

I used to love playing in the Boxing Day games and I used to enjoy training on Christmas Day.

Right from being an apprentice at Town, we always had to work on Christmas Day, making sure the first-team boots were clean for the match 24 hours later and making sure all the kit was ready and put out.

These days, the Academy lads don’t have any matches so they tend to get a bit of holiday, and that’s fine, but in my day we used to have to be in and make sure everything was prepared for the big Boxing Day match.

As a player, I always liked to do a bit of training on Christmas Day, just to have a bit of a blow and stretch my legs.

After all, football is a player’s job and if you’ve got a match, you should prepare properly.

It always used to be a case of open the presents early in the day, report for training and then get home for a bit of Christmas Dinner later in the afternoon.

Most managers I’ve known didn’t mind if you had a couple of glasses of wine, but they obviously issued the warning not to over-indulge.

It was only later in my career that I experienced having Christmas Day at home, with no training, and it seems that more and more clubs are doing their work by Christmas Eve these days rather than asking people to come in on the 25th.

When I was at Sheffield Wednesday the whole squad used to stay together ahead of the Boxing Day games.

We would report for training around 3pm on the 25th, do our session and then travel if we were away or, if we were at home, stay in a hotel in Sheffield.

To be fair, it was worse if we were at home because the hotels tended to be completely dead, with no other guests, and you would go up to the rooms quite early and just hope there was something decent on TV for Christmas Night.

Apart from those few hours in the hotel, I didn’t mind working Christmas Day and the Boxing Day atmosphere always used to make up for it.

People love turning out to watch their team during the holidays and I’m sure our Boxing Day game down at Rotherham will be a sell-out and a cracking occasion.

Then we’ve got Bolton at home the following Sunday, when we hope for a big turnout at the John Smith’s.

I know the lads will be looking forward to both those games before we are back at home again to take on Reading and their new manager Steve Clarke in the FA Cup third round – another exciting day in the calendar.

All I can say is: Enjoy!