Port Vale’s trip to Broadhall Way for their 1st round replay against Boro next Tuesday will be streamed live on the FA website. It’s great news for the club as they are now due to receive £33,750 for the game being broadcasted live, even though it isn’t on TV. It’s an unexpected bonus for Phil Wallace and the club, who after losing the Setanta TV money in the summer have now received this income as well as part of the £1m the Premier League gave to the Conference earlier in the season. Boro will also receive a further £18,000 if they win the replay against Micky Adams’ side and must be in with a shout of getting their next round tie televised too with highflying Huddersfield awaiting the victors.

The extra income gained may help go towards an increased playing budget in the new year. It has been well documented that Stevenage are at their limit currently and have to move players out in order to bring fresh faces in. This extra bit of cash may enable GW to bring a couple of loan players in January, without having to move anyone out. It’s a shame that the news of the extra money has come when it has considering Westley lost one of his loan targets in Michael Brough just last week due to being ‘outbidded’ by Mansfield.

With nothing else to do last night, I decided to pop over to watch the MK Dons v Northampton in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy. Although MK impressed me in the first half, the game overall was quite poor and Northampton in particular looked terrible. After seeing both Port Vale and Northampton in the last few days I can safely say that if we do go up to League 2, we won’t come down.

MK ended up winning the game 3-1 with all of their goals coming in the first 30 mins. Unfortunately Boro old boy Jude Stirling is injured so he didn’t make an appearance. How he’s still playing at that level I don’t know! Although the stadium:mk is impressive, I’m quite glad we have Broadhall Way. Our ground just has so much more of an atmosphere on matchday and even though there were nearly 9,000 there last night, it could of easily been mistaken for a reserve fixture.

Away from the club former Boro midfielder Adam Miller has left Mark Stimson’s Gillingham to join League 2 Dagenham & Redbridge on loan for a month. Miller has fallen out of favour at Priestfield with Danny Jackman and another ex Boro midfielder, Stuart Lewis being preferred. I never really rated Miller when he was here. He was too hit or miss, although when he played well, he was a class above. What I really didn’t like about him though was his attitude. He thought he was far better than he actually was and the way he treated the club when he left was nothing short of a disgrace.