SO here it is, merry Christmas to all my readers and here’s hoping it’ll be a happy New Year for Newport County AFC.

It’s certainly been a good week for us after the win at Portsmouth when I managed to earn us three points with a couple of expertly taken goals.

I wasn’t too happy when the gaffer took me off on a hat-trick but he thought I’d only scored one after the first goal was announced as Adam Chapman’s.

They were my first goals since November 2012 so they’d been a long time coming but I feel like I’ve got a little bit more licence to get forward this season so hopefully I can get a few more and help us push towards promotion.

Ryan Jackson set me up for both of them and you’ll have seen me and him celebrating with a chest bump on the Football League Show.

I was waiting for him to do one of his silly dance moves but I’m glad he didn’t because I’m not sure my knees would have stood up to it!

It was a big win for us in front of 15,000 Pompey fans and 800 of our supporters who were just incredible on the day.

We were delighted to get the win for them and we celebrated as a team that night.

We can’t really have a proper Christmas party this year because of the schedule so a few of us went out and I showed them the bright lights of Newport.

Eight or nine of us ended up in Revolution in the end and it was good to see Byron Anthony back with the lads again but the sight of Chappers dancing like a mad man on his own was the highlight.

It was a great day for the team and for me personally but as far as I’m concerned it’s done with now and our focus is all on beating Wimbledon this afternoon.

We’ll have to look out for Michael Smith who has been in great form for them this season.

A lot of us know him from his loan spell with us this time last season and he’s a good lad and a good player.

We’ll all wish him well after the game but hopefully he has an off day this afternoon.

If we get the win we’ll be in the top three or four at Christmas and we’d have bitten your hand off if you’d offered us that in August.

It’s great credit to all the lads for the way they’ve applied themselves since pre-season and to the gaffer and all the coaching staff.

We’re all in it together and we’re all striving to be as good as we can be.

Off the pitch this week we were happy to go and visit some of the youngsters who will be in hospital at the Royal Gwent in Newport over Christmas.

Every club I’ve been at has done this sort of thing and I think it’s very important.

It reminds you that there are people not as fortunate as you and I think from the smiles on the kids’ faces we made a difference for them.

I’ve been in hospital over Christmas and it isn’t a nice place to be at this time of year so I think it’s essential that we do our bit to help them.

We tried to convince Chappers to dress up as Santa because he’s got the build for it but he wasn’t having any of it.

Robbie Willmott’s got the beard but he would have been too skinny so in the end the kids had to make do with Spytty the Dog instead.

We haven’t got our Christmas schedule all sorted yet but I imagine we’ll be training up to Christmas Eve then have the day itself off to enjoy with our families before the early trip to Wycombe on Boxing Day.

We’ll obviously have to make sure we don’t stuff too much turkey down so we can get around the pitch but we’re used to that as footballers.

As I think I said last year I always remember what Paul Jewell said ‘you can have your Christmas in June’ and that’s spot on. It’s a small sacrifice to make for success.