Freebie Friday: Why are we suffering so much fixture congestion?
Weather keeps winning but could it be done better?
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With the weather not playing ball this month up and down the country, fixture congestion has been brought to the fore once again with the season due to finish for clubs between this weekend (15th April) and 29th April with play-off’s then set to commence.
But what has been the cause of clubs playing so many games as they battle to avoid relegation or continue pushing for promotion? It’s not purely down to the weather in my opinion, but I feel the lack of sensible fixture planning this season has been the root cause.
The bad weather which most clubs suffered from over the course of December and January certainly didn’t help and those with excellent cup runs would expect to be playing a few extra midweek times during the latter months, coupled with those who do have notorious pitch problems.
However, it appears to be a common note than ‘front end loading’ of the season didn’t happen this year. The National League for example have quite often used that option to play games when the weather is at it’s optimum best and by the end of October have at times completed almost a third of the games across a 46 match season.
That might seem excessive but when you consider 21 of 24 current clubs are full time then it doesn’t become a problem and those months after are then purely for cup games and rearranged league matches from competition participation.
Some clubs are sitting on some pretty horrendous schedules at this, the business end of the season. I picked up on Concord Rangers at the bottom of the National League South having something like 11 games to play by the end of April, most of them home games due to the nature of their pitch waterlogging frequently. Those games however don’t just affect Concord, there is the travel for part time players midweek to Essex.
Sandhurst in the Combined Counties then sprung up with 11 games to play in 10 days earlier this week, an impossible task for a Step 5 side to complete and a huge red flag against player welfare.
My own club Barnet have suffered as well, playing every midweek since the end of January bar one week due to an England C game. At one point they had six away games on the trot, the nature of their postponements were weather related to their opponents pitches, in fact only one home game at The Hive suffered from the rain, the other rearranged home games coming from FA Trophy progress.
Down here in Sussex Arundel whose Mill Road pitch is situated close to the river struggle with games from November onwards if the weather takes a turn and despite managing to finally play on Thursday evening this week they had five games still to complete prior to that evening before 22nd April.
No doubt there are many more examples in leagues across the country, it’s important to note that I’m not suggesting the weather future can be predicted for months in advance, but we are all well aware how much easier it would be to clear a fixture list for the potentially troublesome months.
If we look back to the National League in August, just one round of midweek games plus the expected Bank Holiday games. September again one round of Tuesday night games, October there were two rounds of weekday games. Once you get to that point cup games start to be introduced into the fixture list, quite easily those opening two months of the season could have seen another three sets of fixtures inserted which would have given clubs some breathing space after Xmas.
Even player welfare at that level has been discounted, constant match preparation without a full week break doesn’t put people at their best consistently.
The FA have however this week released a statement allowing the season to extend for Steps 5 and 6 to 1st May, very welcome but also very late. Leagues and clubs would have been scratching their heads for the past 14 days to work out how to find a way to fit all these games in, that guidance could have been released two weeks ago and then a lot less headaches for all, but pretty typical of the game’s governing body to be behind the times eh!
Whilst there will never be a perfect solution because you can’t control the weather you can make provisions to keep disruption to a minimum and whilst also looking after the players, supporters wallets aren’t getting a bashing constantly within a few days of the last game, sometimes it’s not rocket science is it…….
What’s you view? Is it preventable? Feel free to let me know in the comments what you think could be done.