The Captain's Column ... Rotherham United's Richard Wood on the FA Cup, Freddie Ladapo, the recent slump, New Year's Eve and those damn Christmas lights

IT’S FA Cup weekend and I can’t wait!

I’m old school. I love the tournament and still really enjoy playing in it.

The third-round tie at Ipswich Town is a chance to put our league form to one side and hopefully get on a good knockout run. It would be great to beat the Tractor Boys and then get one of the big boys in the next round.

It will be a tough game. Ipswich are going well and have got a strong team. Although we’re in the division above them, only seven places separate us so there’s not much between the two sides.

We had two hard matches against them last season when we won promotion from League One and they’re better now than they were then.

The match pits us against Freddie Ladapo, the striker who left us in the summer. I’m sure he’ll be up for it.

Any striker wants to score against their old club and it’s my job to make sure he doesn’t do that on Saturday.

Playing against a former teammate never fazes me. It’s happened hundreds of times in my long career. You put any history to one side and just focus on your job.

JANUARY brings the prospects of new faces and I’m excited about that.

I think we need some fresh blood in the transfer window to help us along. Signings adds something to the dressing room: they give everyone a lift, and then there’s the added bonus of extra competition for places as well.

I’ve always liked fighting for my place. It brings out the best in you.

It’s going to be an interesting month.

SCOTT High has left us to return to parent club Huddersfield Town and I’d just like to wish him all the best.

It’s a shame he didn’t play as much as he wanted during his loan spell here and I hope things work out for him.

Scotty’s a decent player. Technically, he’s very good, and he’s got a good engine on him.

Hopefully he can do well at Huddersfield or get another loan and be given the game-time he needs.

All a player wants to do is play. When you’re stuck out of the side and not doing anything, it’s horrible.

ALL the lads will hold up their hands and admit the defeat at Millwall on New Year’s Day wasn’t a good day for us.

We just didn’t perform at all and it was really disappointing.

We need to stick together and sort things out as quickly as possible before all our good work in the Championship prior to the international break is undone.

Our form isn’t good enough at the moment, but just one thing can give you momentum again: a bit of good play, an early goal, a great bit of defending, whatever. Everything can change from there.

We’ve been hit by injury after injury and that hasn’t helped.

Every other club in the division has more strength in depth than us. When we have a few players out it affects us quite badly whereas a team at the top end of the table can absorb a few absences because they have very good players waiting to come in.

Our bench at Millwall contained two young lads who haven’t made a league appearance between them for us. It’s difficult at the moment. We need to get everybody back fit.

The one player who did play well at The New Den was Viktor Johansson.

Our goalkeeper’s doing all right, isn’t he? He’s been playing well all season and has made some incredible saves.

He’s right up there among the best goalkeepers in the division, in my opinion.

The Viking is a great lad and I get on really well with him. He’s from Sweden but his English is perfect so he takes a full part in all the banter and can be quite lively when he wants to be!

I’M sure your New Year’s Eve was more exciting than mine.

I went to bed around 10.45pm in the team hotel and was in the land of nod as midnight came and went.

Some of the lads were woken up by fireworks but I never heard a thing and didn’t open my eyes until 8.30am.

Then it was breakfast and a walk before the Millwall game: just my usual routine.

I’ve set myself one resolution for this year: to make a better job of putting up the outside Christmas lights than I did in 2022.

What a fiasco that was: half on the tree, half off and never plugged in. I went out last week and dragged them back into the loft because I was so sick of seeing such a sorry sight.

Check out the garden at Wood Towers next December, though. It will be like the Blackpool Illuminations.