Footballers never like postponed matches – although perhaps they have worked in my favour over the past few weeks.

First and foremost, I hope everyone had a better Christmas than I did because I felt rotten.

I picked up some kind of virus a few days before the Boxing Day match against Swindon and, with my kids ill as well, you can imagine things weren’t very festive in the Dailly household.

The doctor quickly ruled me out of the Brentford match as well and it was really only last week that I properly returned to training.

The illness couldn’t have come at a worse time in some ways. Throughout the first half of the season, our back four of Frazer Richardson, Kelly Youga, Sam Sodje and myself proved pretty successful, yet none of us were available for selection at Griffin Park due to illness, injury and suspension.

Of course, there will always be disruption to a team for a number of reasons throughout a season.

But what usually happens is that one or two players get injured at a time, allowing others to come in and be assimilated gradually. No manager likes losing an entire part of his side at once.

Having said all that, everyone who has come in has done brilliantly, not least Miguel Llera, who I played alongside at the start of the season.

Unfortunately, I was too ill to attend the Swindon game but after going down to nine men, that was a magnificent effort on behalf of the lads and I saw Miguel’s wonderful goal on television.

Not only could that point be vital, the togetherness the players showed against the odds is a real demonstration of how the squad is at the moment. Miguel had been out of the side but he’s trained hard and showed he’s as valuable a squad member as anyone else at the club.

It seems odd to still be talking about Christmas but there hasn’t been much football since then.

The postponement of the Walsall and Hartlepool games means I haven’t missed any more matches since Brentford but while that’s worked in my favour, it’s gone against Sam Sodje, who was due to be finishing his suspension this weekend. Unfortunately, he still has another three games to go.

Training has been difficult due to all the snow. We trained at The Valley on an unfrozen section of the pitch one morning last week and we’ve also been using a gym in Sidcup and the indoor dome in New Eltham.

There’s plenty of variety which is good but players like to be playing football, on a full-sized grass pitch, even in training.

I was working hard to be fit enough to play last weekend against Hartlepool if the manager decided I was needed and hopefully I will be available for selection this weekend against Wycombe.

They may be near the bottom of the table but Wycombe did us a favour by drawing against Leeds last Saturday, so we know what will happen if we take our eye off the ball.

All the players are looking forward to pulling on our boots again, we’ll
be making sure there are no surprises on Saturday.