AS some of you may know after it was published in the Evening Press, it was my birthday on Monday (he turned 44 - Ed) but unfortunately I didn't have much time to celebrate.

I started work at about 7.10am and did the analysis of Sunday's win over Dewsbury and some video work. I normally do some work straight after the game on a Sunday but I was a bit fatigued this week, so I just chilled out a bit.

That put quite a bit of pressure on the workload for Monday as a full game analysis can be a five or six-hour job. I had a few other bits and bats to do so I got home at about 6.30pm.

I did, however, manage to get to the cinema by 7.30pm - that was my night out - and saw War Of The Worlds. For any interested film buffs, I thought it was okay but not what I thought it would be. The effects are pretty good and it's probably worth seeing, but I'd recommend waiting for it to come out on DVD rather than rushing to the cinema. (Would you like to be a film reviewer for us? - Ed)

I was up early again yesterday and looked at the player tapes from Sunday.

There's a guy down at Leeds, called Rod Simpson, who puts these tapes together for us. He does the game completion stats for us as well, and altogether it can be quite time-consuming so he does a good job.

Tuesday is usually a full day for me. I normally work with the young players at Leeds, in addition to my work for York, and get there by about 7am. I also do some video work with some of the kids there and in the afternoon shoot over to York by about 5pm for Knights training.

We get everything set up for player meetings, have a look at Sunday's game and then go out to train. I usually get back home at about 10pm.

It's a long day but I can't complain - there are worse jobs than working in rugby league.

One of the potential downsides of the job, however, came to the fore yesterday as Darren Abram (pictured) parted company with Leigh Centurions. I was surprised by this, but at the same time not surprised.

I read only last week that he was happy to go back into the part-time environment, which seems imminent given Leigh's bottom-of-the-table place in Super League. But there has been a bit of publicity regarding Leigh's plans for life back in NL1 and there's been a bit of heat on him.

Both parties have stressed it is a mutual decision, though, so there might have been some issues that he has not been happy with as well.

Anything can happen in this game. Just look at Super League Coach of the Year last season, Shane McNally, who was sacked by Wakefield earlier this season. It's the same throughout professional sport. It's a ruthless business, and someone once told me the only certainty about the coaching job is one day you're going to get sacked.

AS for the Knights, we came up with a good result on Sunday which increased our lead at the top of NL2.

However, there are five games left and ten points can totally change things. We still have to earn the right to get out of this division and our feet are firmly on the ground.

We've got a difficult game at Blackpool coming up. They had a good win over Gateshead, a team against whom we struggled in periods the previous week. We are now focusing on this game and not looking too far ahead.

I spoke to Gateshead coach Dean Thomas and he was frustrated at how they did against Blackpool. He wanted to carry the form they showed in the second half against us but it went against them.

Those kind of supposedly surprise results have happened all season in NL2 and I think that shows the level of competition in there. All the teams aren't as far apart as the table perhaps suggests. It's a very close competition, which is great for the game and for the players as they need to be on the ball every week.

Updated: 10:23 Wednesday, August 03, 2005