When Saints play Pompey it is a volatile atmosphere both inside and outside the stadiums, that has lead to draconian measures to ensure that each game goes off virtually trouble free, so it is no surprise that neither clash will now be played on the Saturday.

The first meeting of the season will see Saints play Pompey at St Mary's on Sunday, October 11, the day after the original date.

The game at Fratton Park will also be put back a day to Sunday, February 28.

Both games will have a noon kick off, probably at the request of the police.

However there is no news yet on whether these two games will be "Bubble" games, as they where last season, where fans had to travel on official club coaches and were escorted from stadium to stadium.

That had it's critics and most people could not see why the coaches travelled down so early, for the noon kick off at Fratton Park, the first wave of coaches left St Mary's at 7.30am and arrived at Fratton Park just before 8.30am.

Saints fans then had to stand out in the open where there was little else to do apart eat and drink, it was strange that for a fixture that was so heavily policed, that with the bars open at 8.30am it was encouraging the fans to have a skinful.

Luckily for that fixture the weather was kind, if it had rained it would have been chaotic.

So if it is a Bubble game, there is a lot of fine tuning to be done.

However it is hard to argue against the Bubble fixture from a logistical point of view, Saints supporters will point to the fact that in the e fixtures at Fratton played without a bubble game since 2003/04 season, that those going by train did not get into the ground until long after kick off due to issues getting from the station to the ground.

Also after the game supporters were held in the ground for 45 minutes as police cleared the streets as Pompey fans rioted.

In contrast the two Bubble games, in 2011/12 and last season, went off relatively trouble free, at Fratton earlier this year, the only real trouble was both sets of fans throwing seats at each other in a corner of the ground, something that would have happened Bubble game or not.

Of course there will be those that will say that it is an infringement of their rights to force them to be only able to travel to the game in a set manner, that may well be true, but infringements would also take place if you went by train and found yourself surrounded by hundreds of robo cops who kettle you to the ground, slowly but surely.

It is hard to see that this derby game will ever be played in a peaceful safe manner, I have been going to them since 1974/75 season, the four games played in two seasons back then, all saw major crowd issues and fighting.

The FA Cup game at Fratton in 1984 was a warzone, as was the trip to there in the League in 1987, the trouble at these games has been going on now for well over 50 years, there are men in their 70's who were fighting as teenagers when the two sides met in so called friendly matches in the late 60's and early 70's.

This is a derby game like no other and sadly it is now inbred into both sides of the fence to hate the other, not just the football team, but everything about the other city.

Some say that the fact that it is rarely played, is a major factor in the trouble, there is perhaps something in that, if we played the game for 10 seasons running, by about the 4th season, neither side would have enough supporters left to go to the game who weren't serving bans from football to cause trouble.

All Photos Via Reuters