All is quiet on New Year’s Day? Clearly Bono hadn’t reckoned with the packed Sydney high streets teeming with the thrifty, the hungover and the clinically bored. Or the scores of bathers struggling for sunstroke space on the busy sands of Bondi. Then there’s packed walkways strewn with baseball capped youngsters heading trance-like to the Domain for the NYD mash up. You’re welcome to the rave. Then there’s the Manly ferries resembling Titanic lifeboats bursting through Port Jackson to get the frantic beach dwellers to their slightly secluded havens.

In short, Sydney is a city that refuses to sleep. Even when it probably has every right to, given the effort it puts in for the big night before.

What to do today then? With my one track mind, a cursory glance at the sporting calendar would surely provide the answer.

The one or two token fixtures in response did little to stir the soul here. Back home, New Year’s Day is one big day of sport, a day chock full of football, rugby, racing and loads more besides. However, in Australia, New Year sport; Where the bloody hell are ya?

I’ve thought of little else since the news came through, like a love note from Blighty to the front, that my beloved Hatters have made it to the top of the table. It will go wrong, it always has, it always does. But for now, I’m passing Hope that gun again.

My team are at home to Barnet later, yet another test of our title winning credentials. That we are where we are is due to the part manager John Still has played in getting there. When he took over it was a shambles. Now we’re playing winning football. The players are behind him, the board are behind him and, pleasingly, the supporters, always a notoriously fickle lot at Kenilworth Road, are behind him too.

On the pitch, we are indebted to the goals of Andre Gray, the industry of Luke Guttridge, but also to our defensive lynchpin Steve McNulty.

Steve McNulty. The first time I saw him play he got sent off. Ignominiously. I have also seen him arrow, Keith Houchen-like, a diving header into the back of the net. Past his own keeper.

Standing squatly, with his closely cropped grey hair and his Sunday League pot belly, he looks nothing like a professional footballer. Indeed, when the Queen meets McNulty (when surely she will) to bestow honours, she’ll doubtless asks him ‘what does he do’. She’ll probably ask him again straight away.

Yet despite his un-athletic exterior, our McNulty is a leader of men. To watch him cajole a young defensive partner through a match is like watching the master, Tony Adams, back at work again. He knows the game inside out, as befits a man of fourteen stone, he uses his cunning to read situations and outwit opponents. Bedecked in Luton Orange, his long passes make him look like the Ronald Koeman of the lower leagues. And he’s capable of this as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBvWs_8ElxM

Honestly. Just watch it again. It’s preposterously brilliant.

If Messi or Ronaldo had done that they’d be playing it on a loop on Sky Sports News.

So, play well Luton. Not just today, but every match day here on in.

2014 is a big year for us. Come on you Hatters.