THIS week it was announced that I would be leaving the Swindon Wildcats at the end of the month.

I’ve had a few calls and text messages about it. It’s a case of bad timing more than anything.

Next weekend will be my last one at the club before I start my new job at Royal Mail in Newcastle.

I applied for the job at the start of the summer and there was a bit of a waiting list, I was hoping I could have looked into it more next year.

It was a bit of a surprise when I got a call a few weeks ago offering me the job starting at the beginning of December.

After that, I spoke to Aaron (Nell) to see if we could work it out but we couldn’t.

I’m not getting any younger and in terms of hockey, I was already on borrowed time.

The job is more of a career and is much closer to home so there will be less travelling and everything like that.

I did think hard about it, but all things considered I don’t think it is something I could have turned down.

Ideally, I could have seen out the season but I don’t think the job will have been there by the time we get to April.

The club have been fantastic to play for and I’ve got four games left so I want to leave on a high.

We play Telford twice in my last two weeks so we could get a couple more wins against them.

The news came at a time when it was announced Sam Godfrey was available, so hopefully he is a ready-made replacement.

Obviously I didn’t want Swindon to miss out on signing him. He’s a local guy and he’s got some Elite League experience so it is a good fit for him and the club.

I think my last last game is going to be away at Telford so that will be a poignant little moment for me.

But the main thing is that we get a couple more wins and I can go out on a high, starting with Saturday.

We have got a good little run of form going and we needed that because we had lost a few games in the league.

Last week we came up against two really resilient teams and we labelled them as ‘must win’ games, so it was good to go out and get those.