WE PUT THE WIND UP EVERYONE

WE got the week off to a great start by winning on a Tuesday night for the first time in 18 months - a 3-2 win over Derby at Bloomfield Road.

It was the first time we've scored more than one goal in a game this season.

I scored our third goal and I'm sure it was all down to my new boots.

Yes, I know I've said in previous blogs I'm not superstitious but....

I hadn't scored for a few games so I thought I'd try new boots and they worked. Mind you, I think a new pair for every game might be pushing it a bit.

Derby boss Paul Jewell blamed the bad weather and our ground, which only has stands on two sides, for his side's performance.

Moaning

I wouldn't disagree - there's nothing quite like playing at Bloomfield Road on a wet Tuesday night with the wind swirling everywhere.

Our training ground is even worse, believe it or not. We train next to Blackpool Airport so you can imagine how open it is.

Our Liverpool loan signing Adam Hammill was moaning about the weather and how cold it was in training the other day.

We all had a good laugh at that because he hasn't seen anything that. Wait till January, when we have our own sort of weather that we call 'snail'.

It's a cross between hail, rain, sand and snow. I'd love to see Rafa Benitez put on a good training session with sand in his eyes and the cones flying over his head.

The weather was pretty bad on Saturday but my boots did their magic again against Crystal Palace.

We came from behind twice, I scored and we probably should have won it but we will take a point to keep our unbeaten run going.

The Palace players kept asking if the weather was as bad every week - I told them it was usually worse in training!

We very rarely get fans turning up to watch us train. It takes a special kind of person to stand and watch us in the bad weather.

We had just that when we were in League One. This guy would turn up looking pretty inebriated and carrying a brown paper bag that had his 'special brew' inside.

Weird

He would start by walking on to the pitch and abusing us all, including the manager, and saying how we would never be as good as the old Blackpool teams.

We would ignore him but then he would challenge us all to a fight. By the time we finished training this guy would be fast asleep in the back of the goal. Classic.

I started back at university a few weeks ago and we are doing a 'football culture' module. For the second half of the class we have a debate about the football culture story of the week - something like how the credit crunch will affect football, racism in football or foreign investors.

The debate always gets round to the students and the lecturer saying how footballers are thick, overpaid and homophobic.

The rest of the class don't realise they have four pro-footballers amongst them (Jason Lee, Gavin Strachan, Barry Roche and me).

They must think it's weird how we are always defending the players but there are not many people who would argue with Jason Lee when he makes his point!

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