It’s a big weekend for the club, not just the first team, with Oxford United Women at home to one of my old teams – Charlton – on Sunday.

Their women’s side used to train on a Thursday and so most weeks I’d go and have a chat with them and talk to the manager.

The same thing happens here now – the women were at the training ground last Thursday ahead of their Cup match and I went over and talked to boss Liam Gilbert.

I offered them the first-team pitch to train on, because it was such a big game for them.

In the end they didn’t use it because they were already set up on the 3G pitches, but it’s just a small example of the way we all work alongside each other.

The last week or two have seen the Under 18s and 21s back at the training ground again.

Sadly that still can’t happen at the same times because of the Covid regulations we’re still working to, but those are starting to ease.

It won’t be long until there are three pitches in use with all age groups working, training and learning alongside each other.

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I think that benefits the younger players.

They learn good examples from the professionals and we regularly call them over to join in training: the day before a match we tend to do 11v11 and the youngsters line up against the starting team, which helps everyone I think.

It was good to see Tyler Goodrham offered a pro deal this week, a player we think a lot of.

Tyler is one for the future, but right now we have to concentrate all our energy on winning the last five games of the season.

I hope the last two performances have entertained everyone.

Scoring ten goals and only conceding one has left us all with a spring in our step and looking forward to today’s game.

We remain the outsiders for a play-off place, but in a season of twists and turns it does feel as though we’re coming into one final straight piece of track where we can see the finishing line.

If other clubs are looking over their shoulders at us then that’s great.

But all we can do is keep our form, try to build on the momentum the last two games have given us, and see if we can finish strongly.

I’m sure we can.

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There have been a few new haircuts around the training ground this week since hairdressers opened again!

I’ve had a drink and something to eat outside my local pub as well, so it does feel as though we’re slowly getting back to normal.

We were talking about this while we were doing our Covid tests on Thursday morning: we still swab all the players and staff twice a week. How good has everyone been?

To come through all that testing and to have had barely any scares is a remarkable effort.

We have taken things so seriously, followed every rule to the letter, and people have made huge sacrifices just so we could keep each other safe and continue to play football.

We’ll still do that.

There are three weeks left and we have come so far together and want to reach the finishing line I mentioned earlier as one team.

Together.