Two other polls closed recently. In the one suggested by director Gary Harwood, a majority of fans wanted to see the design of the current away strip retained - even if a new company supplies the replica kit next season. Two thirds of the voters thought that the blue halves was a classy kit and had been worn for some good away results this season, but a third favoured a change. Many of those would prefer to see a return to the white kit with an amber and black trim. The results of the vote and your comments have been passed onto Gary Harwood and the commercial department.

The other poll was to find the Internet fans' choice of 'Player of the Month' for January. Votes were spread throughout the team this time but Martin Butler won with over a third of the votes, and nearly every voter mentioned his unstinting effort for the team throughout his own personal barren spell. It is the second time this season that Martin has been the choice of U's Net visitors - he was also voted the winner in August - and he will be presented with the award after today's game.

There was a pleasant footnote to the October award when Shaun Marshall wrote a letter of thanks to the fans who had voted for him, and Shaun's response can be seen on the web site on the poll results page.

I made a couple of additions to U's Net last week and you can now search the site using a new 'search engine' and subscribe to an announcement list. The search engine works in a similar way to the giant search engines that index and search many, many sites on the World Wide Web, but this one only searches within the confines of the U's Net web site. One small downside of the way the site has expanded is that it can be difficult to find some information without taking a little time to explore the various menus and learn the site layout. Hopefully the new search engine will allow even first-time visitors to locate a particular piece of information straight away.

The announcement list has been requested by many people over the last few months and is intended to work like an electronic newsletter. By adding your name to the list you will receive an update four or five times a week telling you about new additions or changes to the web site, as well as a summary of recent news from the Abbey Stadium. This should allow fans in foreign parts, who sometimes have slow Internet connections, or fans that visit the site infrequently, to keep up to date with news on both fronts.

We have an important game this afternoon so it only remains to say "Come on you U's!" and I hope to be updating the site with news of a win later this afternoon!