A huge bowl of home-made broth with two slices of plain bread.
Prawn cocktail. Turkey, roast potatoes, stuffing, pigs in blankets, vegetables with all the trimmings and, of course, the dreaded Brussels sprouts.
Black Forest gateau with ice cream, double cream and a flake for good measure. All washed down with a few glasses of wine, half a dozen beers, a sherry and the inevitable Baileys. Sound good? Of course it does, but to many footballers on Christmas Day, that scale of wonderful over indulgence, is a long way from the reality. Indeed, even being able to spend the whole day with the family is a luxury rarely afforded.
Just Another Day
I've been involved in football for 26 years and, for 22 of those I was full-time in one capacity or another as a player, coach or assistant manager. In all that time, I only ever remember having Christmas Day off two or three times. For the majority of football people, it's just another day.
For the most part, the festive season is played out with matches on Boxing Day and New Year's Day (although this year is slightly different with games on the 27th). So training schedules will tend not to change.
The majority of full-time clubs will train as normal on Christmas morning. Times can vary slightly as the players like to get in as early possible, but there will be a general aim to start around 10am. This will allow time to get up with the early risers to open the gifts, spend a wee bit of time with families, pausing only to polish off the remainder of Santa's milk, and chocolate biscuit, before heading out to meet up with the rest of the squad.
The session will usually be slightly shorter than normal. A good hour, in order to allow everyone back to their families and that mountainous Christmas dinner, although, as already mentioned, very few will gorge when they have a match in the next two days.
The vagaries of the weather can also be a major problem at this time of year and if the training ground is unplayable, the options to train become limited as all the usual fall-backs of indoor facilities and 3G pitches are closed.
Contingencies are usually put in place beforehand, whereby the local school janitor is promised a signed top and a bottle of whisky if he can open up on Christmas morning if required. All that means is that at various times throughout my career on Christmas morning I’ve trained indoor, on AstroTurf, in frost, snow and ice and even Portobello beach. Oh, the glamour of it all.
And then for the lucky ones it's back home around lunchtime to relax and enjoy the day. As I’ve said, this year there are no games on Boxing Day which will please the players at the bigger clubs as it means they won't have to head out to hotels on Christmas night.
Many of the top clubs now do this before EVERY match and Christmas Day would be no different with an afternoon training session and then off for an overnight stay. I'm sure the boys will be thanking heaven for small mercies this year.
Hitting the road
When at Notts County recently, Alex Rae and I were on the coaching staff and, as we were the token "Jocks" in the camp, we were allowed home on Christmas Day. In truth, we weren't keen, as it's never a good example at any time to set the players when the coaches have a day off, but as the players and all the other staff were training and would still be able to see their families as they lived locally, Paul Ince (the manager) insisted we go home as long as we returned for the game on Boxing Day at home to Rochdale.
We trained on Christmas Eve, left Nottingham at around 2pm and arrived in Glasgow via a rather snowy and treacherous Scotch Corner in the early evening. Christmas Day was spent with the family, over indulging and doing all those things you can't do as a player, although sharing the driving the next morning certainly cut short the extra-curricular activities.
Gradually though, as the day wore on, the weather reports filtering through from down south were getting progressively worse. Sniffing an opportunity of an extra day off, the phone call was made to the secretary to see how the pitch was. "Fine" was the reply, "the covers are down and we don't anticipate any problems”. So that was it, after 16 hours, the Christmas holidays were over and we made our way back to a frosty Nottingham at 6am on Boxing Day.
It was bitterly cold when we arrived at Meadow Lane at 11am and, just as the secretary had explained, the covers were down. Only problem was, they weren't coming back up as the overnight temperature had dropped to minus nine and parts of the "frost" covers were frozen solid to the ground. GAME OFF.
And with that, any chance of an extended break was gone, with not even a game to look forward to. So the rest of Boxing Day was spent drinking tea in a hotel, playing chess and, watching DVDs of Plymouth Argyle, because, as is the way down there, we were soon back on track with training the next day, indoors, and the journey to Plymouth for the match on the 28th.
And so, the festivities were over...and I never did get that Baileys.
Follow David Farrell on Twitter @davidfarrellfaz
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