Leave our festive football alone
Thursday evening was planned for a trip to Chichester vs Burgess Hill but having spent since the night before in bed with a stomach upset coupled with the wet weather forcing a postponement I haven’t missed anything.
But something has caught my eye over the past few weeks and it’s something that get’s trotted out every single year but not in non-league, ‘there’s too many games to play over Christmas and New Year.’
It’s at the point where it’s boring certain foreign coaches trot out the same rubbish every year that they don’t have enough players and they should be protected more at this time of year.
It’s just enough to make me laugh it really is, whilst I appreciate on the continent countries have a winter break its something that’s never been the same in England.
It’s fair to say we love our festive football. I was brought up with Boxing Day football and of course we were depraved of it last year which probably makes people want it more this year, nothing worse than having something you usually do taken away from you through no fault of your own.
So it’s not as if these coaches are dealing with something new, it’s been here before they arrived and it will be here well after they leave, my opinion is if you don’t like it bugger off elsewhere and get paid much less, quite simple really.
These guys have access to 25 man squads plus an Under 23 set up and also a youth team, but apparently that’s not enough players. Do we have that luxury in non-league? Not in most cases, and hardly ever a 25 man squad, the sheer luxury eh!
I think most of them conveniently forget that without SKY paying the big bucks they wouldn’t be as rich as they are, you ask any manager or player down at our level and I’m sure they’d bite your hand off to be in their shoes, playing and moneywise, I mean who wouldn’t?
I don’t think any of them realise how lucky they are not having to get up at 5am, go and do a full day’s work and then meet up at 3.30pm to head off to a midweek game to get back and 1am the following morning and up again in a few hours for work, that is hard graft!
And these guys are playing no less the amount of games during this same period, in some cases more and of course this is no different to them throughout the course of the season.
Clubs also benefit massively with local derbies around this time of the season too, and with so many off work for a few days attendances can increase massively. We’ve already seen so far this year that there are more and more people attending games at all levels, very few are not seeing any increase at all and I don’t see that stopping this season, people are genuinely so pleased to be able to get out and watch their favourite team.
To be honest what these guys trot out year after year bores me silly, put up with it or bog off, it’s not gonna change on your say so and we like our football at this time of year so deal with it!