I HAVE had some good days in football but one day I won’t forget is October 28, 2006.

I was at Brighton & Hove Albion and I scored a hat-trick in a 3-0 win at Huddersfield Town. It was probably my peak moment as a professional footballer and it came five days after my 20th birthday.

It was a young team and a lot of players had come through the youth team so we knew each other well. I was having a reasonably good season and I was happy with how things were going. We were around the play-offs but weren’t going to win the league. It was a game at a proper stadium and they were doing well at the time. We may not have expected too much.

I scored twice in the first half and a few of the coaching staff said to me at half-time that ‘you might not get many chances to get a hat-trick at this level so make it count’. Thankfully I got the third on 50 minutes with a good goal and, it may sound dramatic, but when I was taken off later in the half I got a good cheer from the whole stadium.

We got the coach from Huddersfield and I think I was dropped off on the A23 between Brighton and Crawley. It got back about 10.30pm and I was rushing home to see my family and go out to a party - although I wasn’t speeding!

And then it all went wrong. The roads were wet and I was driving around a corner and the car started to skid, then it did a few spins and it ended up on the other side of the road. I was fine, just shook up, but the car was a write off. I never got to the party!

It wasn’t ideal but thankfully I only lived about 10 minutes from the Brighton ground at the time. I didn’t even have to pay for repairs to the car in the end, which was a bonus.

So it was an eventful day but I remember it mainly for the football.

My most memorable moment for Billericay is the FA Cup win against Didcot Town. It was on the BBC and one of my good mates was getting married that day. I wanted to be there but couldn’t and ended up scoring a hat-trick and I have never really looked back this season.