As old traditions seemingly erode slowly, the Imps find themselves with yet another 3 pm kick-off being moved for ‘TV‘.
I use the punctuation because, in my mind, there’s a difference between the Sky games. When the cameras are at a game, and a commentator in the stand, that’s a TV game. When there’s a single camera angle and someone sitting in a studio in London watching events unfold a second or two after they actually happen, it’s not really a TV game.
Still, City’s game against Mansfield Town on Saturday, January 11, will now kick-off at 12:30 p.m., as it’s been picked for TV coverage. That should now be it until early March: matches scheduled from the first weekend in March onward will be selected on a four-week rolling basis (for example, games for the first weekend in April will be chosen by early March).
Anyway, we had Sky’s adverts on the podcast, and the club has taken the money, so taking some sort of moral stand about it really isn’t a good look. Also, in a real show of hypocrisy, the early kick-offs actually work a bit better for me. There’s more time at the end of the game to write it up and make sure I have a Sunday free. Or, there’s more time to end up in some bar in Lincoln drinking absinthe coladas, and still get the bus home. At least, I think that’s how I got home.
That said, I like a 3 pm kick-off because that’s when football is played. That’s football day, right? With Wigan, Exeter, the two December games and now another fixture, that’s five kicking off early. You would imagine, given that we’re likely to be in the mix at the end of the season, for at least one more. That’s six or seven moved for TV, theoretically, plus three evening fixtures we’ve currently played (Crawley, Northampton and Blackpool).
There are a further ten that are not going to take place at 3 pm on a Saturday, namely Wrexham, Rotherham, Shrewsbury (Boxing Day), Bolton, Rotherham (NY Day), Blackpool, Crawley, Huddersfield, Reading (Good Friday) and Bolton (Easter Monday). That’s 20 of our 46 games not taking place at 3 pm on a Saturday, with the possibility of a couple more if there are postponements, etc. We could end up playing more than half of our matches at a time other than 3 pm on a Saturday.
That said, 15 (or 16, I can’t be sure, or remember) of our 46 fixtures last season were not played on a Saturday at 3 pm. In 2016/17, no fewer than 25 of our National League fixtures were played outside the ‘normal’ time. Nobody moaned then, so maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t be moaning now.
If we are moaning. I never know these days, I tend not to check.
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