Express & Star

Ally Robertson: I never enjoyed Christmas as a player

I never really enjoyed Christmas as a player, because you don't get to spend that much time with your family.

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Darren Moore and Derek McInnes pose with presents and a tree back in 2002.

With a big game looming on Boxing Day, Big Ron would gather us all at the hotel around 3pm on Christmas Day.

That was for a home game, for an away game, we’d set off even earlier to be in the hotel in the afternoon.

So you were with the lads, but you couldn’t drink, and you couldn’t stuff your face. Basically, you couldn’t do what the rest of the country was doing.

I think he wanted to keep an eye on us, and make sure nobody was tempted by the drink or the food their families would be enjoying.

But there wasn’t that much to do. We’d just watch the television and try and have a laugh before popping a couple of sleeping tablets around 9pm and getting our heads down for the game.

Everybody knows that’s part and parcel of life as a footballer.

We have it pretty good at other times of the year, so you’re more than happy to knuckle down over Christmas.

Christmas Day was normally split into two for me. You’d spend the morning with the family before meeting up with the team, and then finish opening the presents with the kids on Boxing Day evening.

You could have a beer after the Boxing Day game but you could never go too mad because there would always be another match around the corner.

For me, it was just as bad over New Year! Hogmanay is a big deal to us Scots, but once again, we’d have a game on New Year’s Day so that meant the same strict rules.

It’s a great time of year for fans, and there are normally big crowds, but the games weren’t any more special to me.

In the 1978/79 season we beat Arsenal away on Boxing Day and then followed it up four days later with the famous 5-3 win at Old Trafford.

But it didn’t make any difference to me whether we played Manchester United over Christmas or on January 10th.

It was just another game to be honest, and one that you wanted to win, regardless.

To be fair to Big Ron, he used to take us to Jersey for three or four days at the start of January.

We would play the FA Cup third round and then we’d head off on the Saturday night before coming back on the Thursday.

That was our thank you for the Christmas period. That was when we’d catch up with everyone else!