THE visit of Newport County on Boxing Day is a huge game for Worcester City and it is vital the match takes place.

It’s massive for the club financially as a large crowd is expected and it will be a good game because we need the points and won’t be out to nick a 0-0 draw.

Newport are the best team in the league by a mile but hopefully it will be like the FA Trophy game against Grays Athletic when we were not expected to win but progressed 3-1 with goals from Rob Elvins, Alfie Carter and Craig Wilding.

If we work as hard as we did that day there’s no reason we can’t give County a game.

It’s also the closest we get to a local derby in the league and I want the players to show some pride in the club.

Kicking off at 12.30pm is the best time to play in my opinion and I am expecting a fully committed display.

Newport are well on their way to winning the league but I know the manager Dean Holdsworth and he won’t let them take their foot off the gas.

He’s professional and will have them ready to take the points off us so we have to stop that.

They are top but so were Dover when we beat them 1-0 thanks to Mark Clyde’s goal in October.

We will only have had time for one training session before the game following the postponement of the Maidenhead United match last Saturday.

I was hoping some areas by the Brookside at the ground would have been OK to train on but that wasn’t the case and, with nowhere else to go at short notice, we had to cancel it.

Some of the players were going to have a Christmas party in Birmingham on Monday night but I was a bit of a Scrooge and got them in for training on the artifical surface at Brickfields.

It’s a shame it has to be that way but we have got to prepare properly for Boxing Day.

Part-time football is hard at Christmas as everyone finishes work and wants to celebrate — while also putting on a few pounds — but it’s important, as a club and as a team, that we are fully prepared for matches.

Every point is vital from now until the end of the season and, as well as the Newport double-header, we also have a trip to Basingstoke on Monday.

At the start of the season, I said I wanted to prove the bookies wrong about us finishing in the relegation zone and at the moment they are not far off their prediction.

But we have not been outplayed in the vast majority of games and it’s up to us to have a bit more of a killer instinct and not drop our concentration levels because that has cost us some goals.