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On loan - 10/12/2003

I’m currently at Southend on loan…John Gregory was the manager who gave me a chance and I got on quite well with him. He put me in the first team and I played quite a bit. But I’ve been unlucky with injuries. This time last year I broke my ankle which put me out for 4 months. I had 1 game in the reserves and it was in my first game back in the first team that I tore my thigh muscle which put me out for the remainder of the season. It was really frustrating as I think if it hadn’t been for those injuries I would have been playing regularly for the first team. But I came back in the summer and started working on my fitness and it was really good getting back into it.

George Burley, the current Derby manager, has been good to me. I enjoy it at Derby but he knew I wanted first team football, which I wasn’t getting and he said I could go out on loan.  So I’m at Southend, initially for a month, and am really enjoying it. It’s great to be playing first team football and the lads here are brilliant. The manager has recently been sacked but I don’t think it will be too long before a replacement is found.

The atmosphere here is good and we had a great cup game in the LDV Vans trophy against Swansea last week. We won 2-1. But we could have scored more as we had lots of chances. I’ve never played in this trophy before and I felt I played well; I cleared off the line on a couple of occasions. Winning against Swansea means that we’re through to the quarter finals and we play Luton Town. They’re having a good run so hopefully that will be a very good game.

Southend had an FA Cup match against Canvey Island at the weekend but unfortunately I couldn’t play. Derby didn’t want me to be cup tied. I can understand the reason but I would have loved to play in the game as I haven’t played in the FA Cup before. As I wasn’t involved in the game I headed back to derby at the weekend and did a bit of training and caught up with family and friends.


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