Nothing is more frustrating for a player than when he is unable to play and that’s doubly true when you miss a game you’ve particularly been looking forward to.

It seems a while ago now but I had a late fitness test before the FA Cup tie against my former club, Luton, at The Valley at the end of last month, only to be ruled out because of a dead leg.

That was a fortnight ago and with last weekend’s match against Rochdale called off due to a frozen pitch, my next opportunity to play isn’t until Thursday – again against Luton in the replay.

Fortunately, the slight break gave me plenty of opportunity to recover and I was looking forward to going back to Kenilworth Road.

I’ve got great memories of my time at Luton. We had a good youth cup team and when a lot of the old guard moved on, the young players who’d done well were given a chance.

Unfortunately, Luton have always had to sell players to stay afloat over the years and I went to Tottenham for £1m. But as they showed in the first tie, there are some good signs even though they’ve slipped out of the Football League.

It’s strange how the FA Cup draw has worked out. If we win the replay, we will play another of my old sides, Spurs.

I played as a striker and as a defender in my time at White Hart Lane, as I have throughout my career – it’s only in the past few years that I’ve settled as a centre-half. In fact, there was a stage when I was playing centre-half for my club but then going away with the Republic of Ireland and playing centre-forward, which was pretty
weird.

The snow has caused all sorts of problems over the past few weeks. It’s not just games which have been called off, training has been difficult as well. We’ve got an indoor dome at Sparrows Lane but the weight of the snow on top made it too dangerous.

However, with the Luton game the start of a run of three matches in six days, perhaps the rest will have been good for us. We were unbeaten in November and, with some important matches coming up, if we can say the same thing when the new year comes around, we will be in a great position for 2011.