As you know, issue 78 and our very last DUCK was going to be out for the Hull game on Sunday.

All was fine until last Friday, since when – basically, and apologies for ruining whatever you’re about to eat and drink – I’ve spent sat on or with my head near, the family toilet.

I’m rarely ill for some reason, but since last Friday night I’ve been virtually bed-bound with huge stomach cramps, headaches, sweats and chills, a bit of hallucinating (not so bad that I’m imagining a winning Stoke team), and regular and pretty diarrhoea visits of around 8 per hour. Saying that, I’ve lost over a stone, so swings and roundabouts……

Anyway, the mag……

The above means I simply can’t get it sorted for Sunday. Indeed, I very much doubt I’d even be getting there to watch it. But it involves so much more than that…..

• Getting the boxes from the printers - a car full

• Sorting out the address stickers for hundreds of mags

• Once home, putting them in envelopes for pre-sales and subscribers. Sounds easy and quick – but it’ll take me around a full day and a half on my own. At present, I’m struggling to dress myself and walk 5 yards

• Take them and post them – this again, isn’t as straightforward as it sounds

• Delivering the mag to sellers

• ….and that’s before even thinking of hauling around 100 copies to the ground and selling for 2 hours.

After 5 days of not having anything to eat and barely being able to even put the telly on, it simply won’t be happening, despite how much I tell myself it can and will.

The one thing I hate is letting you lot down, but unfortunately, I’ve got to be sensible about this. I’m pretty sure it’s just food poisoning (thanks, duck!) or something like that, but I want our last day selling to be memorable for the right reasons – not throwing up over someone offering me five quid!

Plan of action

Matchday sales: As usual, the footballing gods have, ironically, crapped all over us with fixtures, with no home Saturday game until October 21st (Sunderland). So, we will go with that for matchday sales. This also gives us the back up of Leeds at home a few days later, too.

Online sales/subscribers: We are looking to post yours out first week of October. You’ll also get a free digital copy, too.

Huge apologies for this – if it could be different, it would be. But I’ll tell you now – this issue is definitely worth the wait, and we really appreciate you doing just that to help us out. If you have any queries or questions with this, please contact me. Don’t expect too prompt a reply at present though – this took some bloody effort to write!

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