NOT a lot has been said to the players about Tara Brady’s departure and we certainly didn’t know anything about it before anyone else.

In fact, I only found out when I picked up a copy of the Echo yesterday morning!

Tara, right, is a good bloke and was instrumental in me signing for the football club last summer, so I will always be grateful to him for that.

But as players we remain focused on football and trying to make sure this is a happy place to be.

The club always comes first and we want to progress by getting promotion and having a new stadium as well.

We’re all still determined to make sure we go up and we were therefore really disappointed to lose like we did against Swindon Town on Tuesday night.

We didn’t hit the standards we have set ourselves this season and we defended poorly as a team.

We were also up against a very good Swindon Town side and they took full advantage of us not being at our best.

That obviously annoyed us, but we have to channel that in the right way now and bounce back at Plymouth Argyle.

It will be extremely tough to get a result there as they’re well organised now and have plenty of experience in their side as well.

Plymouth are also fighting for their lives and will be scrapping for everything but we don’t fear going anywhere in this division.

We’ve done well on the road this season and we need to go and get another good result this weekend now.

We need to become consistent again and we actually produced a great performance against West Ham in a behind-closed-doors friendly last weekend.

It was a good opportunity for us to test ourselves against Championship players and we did well.

We all agreed it was a great exercise and certainly better than a hard training session.

But we need to be playing like that more regularly.

Away from the football side of things, I’m proud and delighted to say my wife finally gave birth to our daughter Ava.

Like a typical woman, she kept us waiting and was 10 days late in the end — but she was definitely worth waiting for.

I’d also like to say a special thank you to Samantha who was an absolute superstar of a midwife.