Through the seasons before us..

I love getting emails from people who read the site, as well as your supply of comments on my blog entries of course. This one from Rob was so convincingly written, rather than form it into my own words I’ve just reproduced it verbatim - I think he makes a very good point, so I’m happy to use the site as a vehicle to voice his very well-reasoned view!

If there is one topic that has really got me angry in the last couple of seasons, then it is this one.

Why oh why did we shift our midweek games from the traditional Wednesday night to a Tuesday night?

Of all of the things that annoyed me during the Ginger One’s tenure (and there were many), the most scandalous decision he made was to shift our matches from Wednesdays to Tuesdays. At the time he cited that it would give the players more time to prepare for Saturday games, but as an argument this does not make sense.

Home games for all clubs are the bread and butter, the games that the team is expected to win. Away games are often seen as a bonus - a point is a good result. Why do we then jeopardise our chances in the home games by not giving ourselves the extra day to prepare following a difficult trip the previous Saturday? I think it is no coincidence that we have struggled at home in midweek games in the last couple of seasons - just think back to Oldham and Blackpool this season.

There are also financial implications for the club that I do not think they have taken into account. Our gates for midweek games have fallen away dramatically. Why is this?
One explanation that is fairly obvious to those of us who work in manufacturing is that often Tuesday is either an extremely heavy workload which requires work into the evening (often caused by a link to the main retail shopping days at the weekend) or it is a deadline day for items required to be in place by the end of the week. I have no doubt that a number of fans (season ticket holders included) have real difficulty getting to games on a Tuesday as a result of work commitments.

Also, Forest playing matches on Wednesday have often given us a real advantage over the teams who play on Tuesdays - an advantage we handed straight back to Bristol City this season. They knew exactly what they needed to do by the time their match started.

Finally, and this is the most important point of all. Forest played their matches on a Wednesday for as long as I can remember. It is the night where traditionally we had some of our greatest ever performances, whether in Europe, a domestic cup or the League. Why break from those traditions?

I would like to think the club would listen if we raised these issues. Can we start a campaign to bring back Wednesday night football next season?

So what do you all think?  I know that since I play football on tuesday nights it does make getting to the game a pain in the proverbial, although I suppose that the choice of our weekly game of football is hardly something that couldn’t have been played on a wednesday or any other night of the week!