JOHN White will try his hardest not to reach for the sick bag when the Royal Wedding is shown on the screens of the Colchester United team coach today as the squad make their way down to Somerset for tomorrow’s final away game of the season at Yeovil.

JOHN White will try his hardest not to reach for the sick bag when the Royal Wedding is shown on the screens of the Colchester United team coach today as the squad make their way down to Somerset for tomorrow’s final away game of the season at Yeovil.

Not because he’s an anti-Royalist or general misery you must understand, but because, amongst a team that has been labelled ‘travel sick’ because of their terrible away form, he is the one that literally suffers from the infliction.

“Away journeys are usually me down the front with the driver, sitting hunched up on the floor in silence just trying not to feel ill!” said the 24-year-old.

“I’ve been getting travel sick since I was a little kid and I thought it was something I’d grow out of, but it seems to have come back a bit in the last couple of seasons.”

After this weekend the long-serving Colchester-born full-back will have travelled well over 9,000 miles with the U’s this season alone. Hours of stomach-churning discomfort would have been worth it had the Essex side’s away form been strong and White a big part of it. Unfortunately neither has been the case.

The U’s are in the bottom four of the League One away table having lost half of the 22 matches played on their travels so far – including 11 out of the last 15. A huge part of that is down to the fact they have scored the least away league goals out of anyone in the division.

To make it worse for White he has been an unused substitute or not on the bench at all in 13 of the team’s 25 away games in all competitions, making long trips to the likes of Carlisle, Tranmere and Hartlepool just to end up a spectator.

“Over the years I’ve been in and out of teams and had times where I’ve been sitting on the bench or not even getting changed – you just learn to deal with it,” said White.

“You don’t want to appear over the moon because the manager might think you don’t care if you’re not playing, but at the same time you don’t want to be a problem to him. All you can do is just try your best in training.”

And what can he do about the travel sickness?

“I tried putting it out on facebook to see what people came back with and I got all sorts of crazy suggestions,” laughed White. “One person told me to try sitting on a newspaper (it’s supposed to relieve static) which I tried but it didn’t seem to work so it’s just a matter of trying tablets again.”

White may be relieved to get the last away game of the season out the way tomorrow, but with the season fast-approaching its conclusion his future at the club remains up in the air.

Having made over 150 appearances for his boyhood club, the popular, versatile and defensively dependable player – who has found himself behind Brian Wilson in the pecking order this season – finds himself reaching the end of his contract. The EADT understands the player has been offered a new deal but that negotiations are on-going.

“This is a new situation for me because I’ve always been given a new deal a year early or with six months to go,” said White, whose only time away from the club has been brief loan spells at Stevenage and Southend.

“In a perfect world I’d be here for the rest of my career, but you don’t know what’s going to happen in football. We’ll wait and see what happens.”

– Full Yeovil v Colchester preview in tomorrow’s EADT.