Gillingham's Cody McDonald in action against Port Vale
Picture: Barry Goodwin

We're hoping we can start 2011 with a win on Saturday and make it a good year for the football club.

With everyone in good spirits at the moment, we see league newboys Stevenage come to Priestfield. Like most teams who come up from the Conference, they have started the season well and knowing their manager, they will come to us well prepared.

They are a big, strong side who will get the ball forward quickly so we will have to be up for a battle. Our back four have looked solid recently, so I’m confident we will shut them out.

We are certainly seeing it as a game we can win, especially with the form of Bayo and Cody, who work well together and are both scoring goals.

With the frustrations of the cold weather putting pay to our game at Aldershot on Boxing Day, it gave the lads a couple of extra days to digest all that turkey from Christmas Day in preparation for Port Vale.

All credit to the groundsman and his staff in working hard to make sure the pitch was playable, as the morning before there were doubts that the pitch may not thaw in time.

In fact, the pitch was surprisingly quite soft, which made it heavy and at times fairly difficult to play on.

So finally we managed to get a game on and I think everyone would agree that it was a fantastic result against a side sitting second in the league.

It was an all-round good performance from the whole team with everyone pulling and working together.

After a perfect start, with Cody continuing his fine form with a good finish from outside the box, the goal settled everyone a lot quicker than in previous home games where there has been a bit of tension in the opening minutes.

The match was pretty similar to when we played them away, where we dominated in large parts of the game and reduced them to few chances. In fact, I don’t think Alan Julian had a save to make on Tuesday.

Obviously the big difference was that we managed to score three goals and, more importantly, get three points, which has now seen us climb into the top 10 for the first time this season.

We have now put ourselves in a great position going into the new year to push for at least a play-off place.

It’s going to take a lot of hard work but we will take it one game at a time. It’s four wins in a row for us and we are determined to continue this fine run of results.

The Port Vale game saw myself and Andy Barcham getting some important minutes on the pitch. It’s been difficult for us boys coming back from injury as the snow has stopped us from doing the necessary rehabilitation.

You can do as much cycling, rowing or cross-training in the gym as possible but there is such a difference in getting onto the training ground and putting some miles into your legs through running.

It was fantastic to get back out there on Tuesday. It was only the second time I had run on grass in two months so it was difficult to get into the tempo of the game. Hopefully now though, with temperatures rising, we can get some good training into our legs and begin to stake a claim for a place in the starting line-up.