There is an unusual reason, apart from the obvious one, why Town midfielder Jay Tabb wants to feature in Mick McCarthy’s starting line-up at struggling Millwall this afternoon.
An apprehensive Tabb, who has recovered from the bug that also claimed Teddy Bishop and Cole Skuse as victims, knows what being named as a substitute at the Den will mean.
He laughed: "I’ll be glad if I’m starting. I hate being a sub there because when I warm up I get the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs song sung at me: ‘Hi ho…!’
"It happens all the time and it doesn’t help that the rest of our subs always laugh at it. Our fitness coach, Andy Liddell, loves it as well. If I’m starting I won’t have to go through that!”
Tabb, at 5ft 5ins one of the country’s most diminutive footballers, was absent from Town’s FA Cup third round draw at Southampton and the midweek replay at Portman Road that saw the high-flying Premier League outfit edge a victory thanks to the only goal scored by his former Reading team-mate Shane Long.
He added: "I started to feel unwell before the game down there. I just felt rough and I came back in to train Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and I felt okay. But then I lost my voice and my throat had gone.
"Against Derby I was okay in the first half with the adrenaline but in the second half I felt terrible and had to come off. I feel alright now. I’ve had a few days off and was on antibiotics so I was back training on Thursday and I feel good.”
Tabb watched the second game against Southampton on television as Town were denied the win required to earn a fourth round home tie against another Premier League side, Crystal Palace.
He said: "When I was growing up I regarded the FA Cup as the biggest club competition. I always wanted to do well in it and I’ve had a couple of good runs. But if you’re at the top of the Championship, sometimes a cup run can be a distraction.
"There’s a couple of ways to look at it really. It’s still a great competition and you want to do well in it but I think the fact that we’re now out of it means we can concentrate on the league and we’re in a great position with the second half of the season to come.
"We may have lost two on the bounce to Derby and Southampton but morale is still high. These games showed how there are such fine margins in football. Derby was a game where both teams looked like they were maybe a little bit edgy, because we’re both up there at the top of the league, and it was just a one-goal game.
"It could have gone to us because I thought it was a stonewall penalty for handball by their defender and we had a couple of other little chances as well.
"We started the game well but it was just one of those games where you lose. It’s about how we bounce back from that and we need to start another long unbeaten run at Millwall.”