Three more kick-off changes
Monday, 23rd Jun 2008 17:26

Three more of our away games will have to kick-off at lunchtime, while the friendly at Rotherham has been called off altogether.

The kick-off times for the games at Carlisle, Huddersfield and Yeovil have been brought forward “on Police advice”. This is in addition to the Peterborough and Scunthorpe games that have already been moved, so we now have four of our first five away games starting earlier than 3pm.

The game at Yeovil on Saturday August 23 has now been brought forward to 1pm, despite the fact that last year’s game passed off peacefully even though a fair number of Leeds fans managed to get tickets in the home areas of Huish Park. The earlier time will obviously cause needless inconvenience for those travelling down from Leeds on the day.

The trip to Brunton Park on Saturday September 20 will now kick-off at 12.15pm and the Huddersfield away game on Saturday February 14 will have a noon kick-off. There was a small amount of bother at Carlisle the on our first visit last season, but not during the play-off game, even though that was an enormously disappointing night for the locals.

Meanwhile, Peterborough director Barry Fry has been making inflammatory comments after three of his clubs home games had their kick-off times brought forward. He said "We want to protect the city of Peterborough. Leeds, Leicester and Millwall fans have a reputation, and we want to give them less time in the pubs before kick-off". The last time Leeds travelled to London Road was for an FA Cup tie in 1986, and there was no significant bother from the 4000 Leeds fans who were present on the day, even though we were knocked out with the help of some dubious offside decisions.

The friendly we were due to play at Rotherham on Wednesday, 30 July has been called off, you guessed it, due to 'concerns raised by South Yorkshire Police.' Once again this isn’t a venue where Leeds fans have caused any bother when we’ve been there before, but why should South Yorkshire’s finest let a little thing like that bother them?