Ben Davies / Ben Davies / 13 January 2010 / Leave a comment " class="free-bet-btn" rel="external" onclick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/G4/inline-freebet');" target="_blank">Free Bet View Market

Notts County have not played a single game in 2010 thanks to the snow, and all that time off has put our columnist in reflective mood

"I will find it really hard to hang my boots as it is something that I have always loved and have done from the day I could walk. Ever since the day my dad used to take me and my brother down the park it is all I have ever wanted to do."

Yet again it has been another week without any football at all as the big freeze continues.

The frustration continues for most of us footballers as the games keep getting postponed and the fixtures pile keeps growing. It is really starting to annoy us all at Notts but there is nothing that anyone can do about it. We are still yet to play this year and our pitch at Meadow Lane remains frozen and under eight inches of snow. We travel to Bradford this weekend desperate for a game of football and are all hoping that the game will go ahead.

Having had no games of football to prepare for and having lots of time on my hands it has made me think of what I could possibly do when I eventually retire from football. I am not the most academic of people and am a very active person so would have to do something that is physically demanding. There are a couple of things that interest me other than sport and I am currently starting to put things in to place for when the day I have to retire from football arrives. My father-in-law is a property developer and my dad is also involved in this line of business so this might be the route I go down. Nothing will compare to being a professional footballer but life will have to go on and I would be surrounded people in the know in this trade.

Being a coach is another thing that I have been looking in to. There are a few of the boys at Notts who are set to do their coaching badges this year which has given me an extra initiative to get the badges under my belt. A couple of the boys are all ready quite advanced in the coaching department with our midfielder Matthew Hamshaw already coaching one of the Rotherham United young boys teams and being a very accomplished coach. It would be a great way to stay involved in the game after I have finished. My brother is a coach in America for a team in North Carolina and one day I would love to go out there and join him and pass on some of the knowledge that I have gained over the years.

I will find it really hard to hang my boots as it is something that I have always loved and have done from the day I could walk. Ever since the day my dad used to take me and my brother down the park it is all I have ever wanted to do. I was very single minded from about the age of nine that there was nothing else that I was going to be but a footballer and I had to be one. It all really took off when at the age of 15 I went to Stoke City to become a scholar and have remained a professional footballer ever since.

I come from a very sporting family and I have grown up on sport. The biggest decision of my life was whether to become a footballer or a cricketer. I was also very keen on my cricket and was a decent Batsman/wicketkeeper. At the age of about fourteen I had to decide which one I was going to pursue but there was no real doubt in my mind. Sometimes I do wonder now if it was the right decision when I see the cricketers in all of these sunny beautiful climates and I am trudging through the snow in minus temperatures with mild frostbite on my toes.

I have been keeping a close eye on all of the action from the African Cup Of Nations tournament the last couple of weeks. It's been interesting to see a lot of people really slating the tournament and saying how bad it is for the Premier League teams to be loosing a lot of their top stars. I do agree that the timing of the tournament is not ideal but managers know what the score is when they buy these players. What a lot of people also forget is how important the tournament is to the players and the countries competing in it. It is their equivalent of our European Championships. The standard of the tournament gets better each time it comes around. Some of the African teams that have qualified for this summers' World Cup will prove to be real tough opposition and I think that a couple of the teams could go far in the competition.

For this weeks bet I have picked the Portsmouth v Birmingham game. I predict the score will be 0-2 to blues at the very good rate of [17.0]! Or alternatively Blues to win at [2.84].

Tags: African Cup Of Nations, Birmingham, Matthew Hamshaw, Portsmouth