A booze-free Christmas and New Year -- that's what our players can expect with us facing such a hectic holiday schedule.

It's very important that they look after themselves during the festivities and we are going to have to put some restrictions on them.

And that means no alcohol. It can be hard enough to recover in between matches anyway, but if your body doesn't get the right re-fuelling then it's going to take even longer.

You only have to look at the number of matches we have got coming up to understand that we are going to have to be at our best.

After this Saturday's trip to Hull we then entertain Mansfield Town on Boxing Day followed by another home game, this time against Scunthorpe, four days later. That's followed on New Year's Day by a visit to Torquay.

So, all in all, it's a vital period coming up for us and we have learned already that all games this season are very difficult.

Apart possibly from the match against York City, when he got ourselves into a commanding lead and could afford to play out the second half, it's been very, very tough for us.

And, believe me, these games that are coming up over Christmas and New Year will be no different, particularly as they come so close to each other.

With last Saturday's scheduled match at Shrewsbury Town being postponed because of a flooded Gay Meadow ground it gave us a chance to step up our training sessions.

Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, in particular, we had the perfect opportunity to do some hard physical work and the players enjoyed it.

I think they thought it was good and yesterday we began a normal week's training in readiness for Saturday's game at Hull.

I was elsewhere at the weekend watching someone -- I don't really want to say any more than that -- so my assistant Gary Barnett went to Boothferry Park to run the rule over The Tigers in their Division Three match against Torquay United.

It all helps in our preparations and, of course, it also gave Gary a chance to check on Torquay's progress since they came to us on the opening day of the season and lost 2-0.

Anyway, enough for the time being about what's coming up over the holiday period.

Last Saturday, of course, was the draw for the second round of the LDV Vans Trophy and, as our fans all know by now, we have been handed a challenging tie at Bury.

In the ideal world we would have preferred to have played them at home, but we've just got to get on with what we've been given.

Bury are a team from the Second Division and made a very bright start to the season, but since then have had their sticky patches. They have some good players and it is going to be difficult for us. I would suggest that they will take it very seriously.

To have a chance of progressing we'll probably have to reach the kind of heights that we did in our Worthington Cup match at Walsall in August.

But, having got over the first round hurdle against Carlisle, we are now looking forward to the trip to Bury. After all, it's a very serious competition for us and one which we would dearly like to win.

But, at the moment, we've got to fully focus on our Christmas and New Year matches and, of course, we've the chance to make progress tonight in the Worcestershire Senior Cup when we entertain Solihull Borough in a quarter-final match. As I've said many times before we go into every match wanting to win it and tonight will be no exception.

Just a word about the two trialists we have been running the rule over.

Tony Capasso, a midfielder, has now returned home to Canada while striker Darren Middleton is training with us again this week.

He did well last week in training and scored two goals for our reserves.

Just one more thing before I sign off -- have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.