Ben Herd / Ben Herd / 27 August 2008 / Leave a comment " class="free-bet-btn" rel="external" onclick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/G4/inline-freebet');" target="_blank">Free Bet

Rice and prawns are Ben Herd's poison when he's limbering up to bomb down the flanks for Shrewsbury. Off the pitch he plays the stockmarkets and tips Jose Mourinho for Euro glory.

In football I'm always looking to better myself and I approach everything outside the game with the same mentality.

I don't really have many hobbies. I did go through a stage of playing on my PlayStation most afternoons, but after a while I realised that I could spend my time bettering myself.

I've recently become interested in the financial markets and now spend a lot of my time watching Bloomberg, monitoring stocks and shares! I also like to play cricket with my mates in the summer, just a bit of a mess around really, and there's nothing like having a good old BBQ after the game!

Keeping fit, although part of my job, I also consider a hobby. I like going to the gym, all the lads go along and there's always a lot of banter. Last year, some lads only went down there for a token 10 minutes, to have a quick pose in the mirror. I'm not naming anyone.

A healthy diet is important. I like a balanced diet and keep to my five-a-day but when I was at Watford and Gianluca Vialli was manager, we had the Olympic doctor full-time and he banned salt, pepper, even ketchup! We were eating boiled fish, really bland food , but thankfully it didn't last long.

I do most of the cooking at home and treat myself to a curry now and then but measuring body fat is quite a big thing at the club so I can't go for too many.

Tests are carried out once a month with only a few days notice, and if you're over 12% you have to go into 'Fat Club' and do extra running down the gym with one of the coaches. That's something to avoid - judging by the lads' faces as they come off the treadmill!

Just in case you're interested, I'm currently 10% at the moment. I did read in Roy Keane's autobiography that when he was at Nottingham Forrest as a lad, his body fat was 19%, and later on when he was at Man Utd, it was 6%.

This just shows you how times have changed, with pioneers such as Howard Wilkinson and Arsene Wenger who got nutritionists into the game and encouraged players to eat healthily like having pasta dishes before a game. For a pre-match meal I used to eat scrambled eggs, beans and bread but I found that it was too heavy on my stomach. Now, I eat rice and prawns - a much lighter pre-match meal as I feel sharper and quicker during the game.

Obviously it's different with away matches, but in the last couple of years, our coach has been upgraded from a school bus to a proper coach with all sorts of facilities. It even has a microwave so we can bring along pre-made meals, or we just stop off at the hotel beforehand to eat.

Journeys to away matches can be laborious so to pass the time there are a few card schools on the coach - nothing like the £30,000 a hand you hear about with the England squad! I sometimes get involved in playing Hearts with a few of the lads for £1 a game. The furthest trip for us in League Two is probably Darlington.

Most Champions League clubs would probably fly to those sort of games. Speaking of the Champions League, this week sees the end of the qualifying round with some teams having to travel far and wide. I'm going to go for Inter Milan to win the European Champions League at [8.8].

Jose Mourinho has a mixture of creativity going forward and a solid defence and has made some good acquisitions, Sulley Muntari being one of them. Also, with Zlatan Ibrahimovic up front, I can see them scoring goals.

Tags: Ben Herd, Champions League betting, football betting, Inter Milan, Jose Mourinho, Shrewsbury Town, Zlatan Ibrahimovic