This is the perfect way to end my career as a professional footballer.

We?ve got ten games left, we are top of the league by six points, there is everything to play for and every game matters ? I couldn?t really ask for more.

My last matches as a professional could very easily have been meaningless, the team secure mid-table, nothing really at stake and just going through the motions for the last quarter of the season.

But something special is happening at this club and I am delighted to be a part of it.

I must admit I had no idea this would happen. When I joined Southend, I was thinking that mid-table would be about alright. The way the manager sold it to me, I was joining a recently promoted team with no big time Charlies but a strong work ethic and a willingness to work hard.

There was no talk of instant promotions, he was talking like a man who wanted someone to help the side just secure life in League One.

I was thinking anything in the top ten would be a good season and securing safety was the priority, but instead we find ourselves sitting at the top of the table looking down at the others and knowing the countdown to our season is really on.

This is all I could have ever asked for in a final season, every single match really matters and I think this is going to go down to the last couple of weeks of the year.

When I am finished playing and am back home, I am going to be able to look back on my time as a professional and reminisce about how exciting my last ten games with Southend were.

It has reached the stage of the season where the lads really are beginning to get excited. Before it was too far away and we were just focusing game by game but now people can?t but help look at where we are and how little time is left.

But there is still more than enough time to go for us to blow this.

Mathematically we could lose the last ten matches and not make it. No one thinks that is going to happen, but I think we know that there is still plenty to do and that getting complacent now could cost us.

The permutations are quite complicated still, although one of the boys, Mark Gower, is earning himself a reputation as a bit of a ?statto?.

He knows who we still have to play, how many points we need to guarantee our place, who everyone else chasing has left to face ? it is amazing. All I know is that we have Scunthorpe on Friday but he is way ahead of that and working out all the different things that could happen.

For us to be where we are with ten games left, we would now be disappointed if all we did was make the play-offs. At the beginning of the year, we would have taken them, but we are now in such a strong position that we are concentrating on a top-two finish and that is what we are really after.

And we got ourselves one hell of a confidence boost by the way we beat our local rivals Colchester at the weekend.

We were 3-0 up at half-time and that probably has to go down as the best 45 minutes of football this season. It was such a big game and we really did well to get such a healthy lead.

It is better sometimes in the big matches like that to be the away side, because the onus is on them to come at you and once we sneaked the early goal, it filled us with confidence to go on and win it.

That victory has done a lot for us in terms of relieving pressure and helping us believe we can do it this season.

To get such a comfortable win in such a massive game against our biggest rivals is great for everyone connected with the club.

This is it, we have ten games left, everything to play for and I can?t wait to get out there again.