I trust you all had an enjoyable Christmas and that you all ate too much, drank too much, and had far too enjoyable a time to remember the events of last week.

By Hamilton Nemo

I trust you all had an enjoyable Christmas and that you all ate too much, drank too much, and had far too enjoyable a time to remember the events of last week. I hope that by now the events of 19th December are but a blur in the fuzzy haze of your memories of Christmas week. But cast your minds back if you will to the events of last Saturday. You may remember that the weather was freezing cold. You may remember that Huddersfield Town, managed by our former assistant manager Lee Clark, came to Carrow Road and outplayed us in a first half which fortunately for us remained goalless. You can imagine what was said in the dressing rooms at half time by the managers. Lee will have been beaming. He will have said smugly, with just a hint of complacency “Well played lads. Keep this up and we will get something from this game”.

Paul Lambert on the other hand will have been incandescent with rage. He will have directed the full blast of his hairdryer at the players and berated them in a very Glaswegian and quite unintelligible way. “Hoots mon, Effin ell Jimmies if ye canna play better than that then I'll have to bring back Whaley and Skippy fa the nixt game”. Or whatever. The result of course was that City came out with a new sense of purpose, played the Terriers off the park, scored three cracking goals and could have had more, and allowed the Barclay the luxury of asking Lee Clark if he was Roeder in disguise. Cue much Canary satisfaction as happy fans gleefully skated and tobogganed home through the ice and snow to celebrate in the pubs and homes of East Anglia.

Your humble correspondent too quaffed a celebratory pint in the Gunn Club, watched Rusty pick up a richly deserved Man of the match award and caught the 18.00 train back to London. Halfway through the journey an ashen faced City fan returned from the buffet car looking as though he had just seen a ghost. “Did you know”, he enquired breathlessly “that the first team squad, with Darren Huckerby, are partying in First Class?” Spies were despatched to check out the story. It was 100% true. The majority of our squad were knocking back Stellas as though there would be a drought of it the next day.

Your correspondent, when watching the post match interviews on Canaries World, spotted that the Doc was turning and heading off only seconds after his interview with Chris Goreham, presumably as he was late for the train.

Additionally he can also report that on the journey to the capital there was much jollity and Christmas spirit amongst the squad. Hucks was so flush with cash he could afford to buy a fan a can of Stella, despite the exorbitant prices charged on the train. Jamie Cureton was polite to a supporter who gushingly mentioned how impressive his twisting and turning and dribbling was having confused him with Wes Hoolahan. And the Doc was gleefully talking up his chances, to anyone who would listen, about how he would soon be playing for Barcelona after his recent goal scoring exploits.

We waved them goodbye at Liverpool Street and wished them a good evening. I suppose that they then went on to a club or watering hole in London and drank and danced the night away. I hope they avoided the excesses of Manchester United's infamous escapades a couple of years ago. Personally I think they played so well against Huddersfield that they deserved the chance to sink a couple of beers, let their hair down, and enjoy a relaxing Christmas party.

From watching our victory against Millwall it was obvious that they had all recovered well and worked off the excess in a couple of hard training sessions at Colney.