WE face the longest trip of the season on Saturday at Torquay but the pleasing thing is we will have an overnight stay.

The accommodation will probably be more Fawlty Towers than the Hilton but, joking aside, it will be comfortable and the food will be OK, which are the main things.

There's always one or two complaints but that's human nature. When we went to Leyton Orient we went down on the day which was unfortunate because, in an ideal world, you would like to stop over night for preparation reasons.

There is a possibility we would have had an over nighter in Southend but with that due to be re-arranged now it will probably be on a Tuesday so we will have to travel on the day.

We stopped over at Yeovil and we will do at Swansea for the last game of the season, which looks like it will be the only other one now.

We accept that and understand that the days of everything on a silver platter have gone now.

The Premiership boys use planes a lot and it would have been nice to fly down to Exeter but we have to work within our means.

It will be good, daft as it is, to get that bit of camaraderie that comes when you are away for the night. You find out who the characters are in the camp but obviously the main priority is to get a result.

We will set off straight after training on Friday at 12.30pm and have dinner when we get there.

Then we'll just go for a walk after breakfast in the morning. Sometimes people train but we will do the same as we would on a normal Saturday morning.

The main advantage of an over night stay is to get the travel aspect out of the way. It does take it out of you and I think that looking ahead past the Torquay game we will have that extra day off because we are playing on Sunday and that will help get it out of our system.

Everybody knows if you travel on a coach for six hours you get off and feel a bit leggy and I would hate to think we would have to travel there for six-and-a-half hours, jump off the coach, play the game, jump back on and then come in for a Tuesday night game.

You would never get it out of your system and our preparations and the day off will give us a realistic chance going into the next game.

We will travel back Saturday after the game and get back to York at midnight at the earliest so, by the time we have picked our cars up, we will be getting into bed at 1am, which is not ideal but you have then got to write Sunday off really.

That's when you need to get your rest in. Sometimes at this time of year you might want to go Christmas shopping but players have to realise it's a day off. It's hard but they have to be professional and make sure they put their feet up and go for a swim or have a bath or a massage. They just need to totally relax and get the journey out of them.

I also think the professional aspect of the game these days means I will not be looking out for players shooting off out of their bedroom windows.

Those times have gone, rightly or wrongly, but from a manager's point of view it's definitely better! They will be off to their rooms at 10pm or 10.30pm and it will be the normal routine they follow at home.

Whatever our preparations, I know they will be better than when I was on loan at Torquay nearly ten years ago.

One of the games I played was at Scarborough and we set off at about 7.30am which was bizarre.

We went up there and we were leggy and the result was we were beaten 2-1. You could see the lads were effected and at the time we were in the play-offs and doing well.

It did not give us a fighting chance really and I found it a bit surreal coming from Burnley who at the time stayed over night for anything over two hours. But the only one we got at Torquay was Carlisle away!

Updated: 10:34 Thursday, December 11, 2003