End travel nightmare – Hill
KEITH Hill called on the Football League’s fixtures organisers to help clubs out by avoiding the unnecessary travel and costs incurred when it comes to midweek fixtures.
Hill cited Dale’s derby clash against Bury last Saturday as a game that could have been played in midweek, allowing Dale to travel to Wiltshire at the weekend to play the game against Swindon.
On Saturday, Swindon journeyed to AFC Wimbledon, a journey of 92 miles. However, that is significantly less than Wimbledon’s 235-mile trek to the north west for Tuesday’s game at Bury.
Hill sees no reason why those fixtures couldn’t have been reversed.
“It was a nightmare two days,” said the Dale boss following his side’s game against the Robins.
“I believe we could have played Bury on Tuesday night having travelled to Swindon on the Friday and played them Saturday. AFC Wimbledon could have travelled up to Bury and played them at the weekend.
“We’ve spent two days in a hotel trying to do the right thing but there is a lot of dead time and you don’t really want to spend time in a hotel. Spending dead time in a hotel is very expensive.
“But with the state of the roads these days it is very difficult – it took us six and a half hours to get to Swindon on Monday.
“If we’d done that on matchday it would have been a catastrophe, so we tried to do the right thing. But somebody help us with the fixtures, please!”
Given the horrendous journey to the south west, Hill was quick to praise the travelling contingent.
“We always give credit to the fans who travelled down and they stayed until the end.”