I travelled to Crewe the other day to see the mighty Ipswich beat the only slightly less mighty Crewe Alexandra. Not much hardship for me, travelling to this particular midweek away match because I was staying in Liverpool for work so got back in time for my usual midnight Ovaltine.

But what about the dedicated 600 or so sons (and daughters) of Suffolk who had a four-hour return journey to look forward to? Not to mention the players and staff who after stupidly allowing extra time to delay their return journey even further, probably didn’t get home to their modest homes until gone 4 o’clock in the morning. But nobody seemed fazed by it; it’s what they do for most away games.

It’s strange how the size of a country seems to determine what people perceive as a bl@*dy long way away. I’m sure you will have heard stories about how in Australia, having a cup of tea with you gran after driving for six hours down a desert road and than driving back again the same day is considered perfectly normal. Well, the opposite also applies. I am Dutch but live here. The Netherlands is roughly two by three hours travelling time in size. So more or less the same as East Anglia but with about 10 times the number of people. I used to live in Rotterdam and when we were children, we used to visit my aunt in Amsterdam, all of one hour's drive away, once a year and stay the weekend as it was considered mad to do that in a single day.

Back to football and the travelling to watch matches. I watch a lot of Dutch football and during the equivalent of Match of the Day on Sunday evening, the programme habitually refers to FC Groningen and Heerenveen as being situated in the “far north”. In reality, they are both about two hours drive from Amsterdam.

Recently, when Roda JC, who come from near Maastricht, inevitably called the “deep south” by the scruffy eejit who presents it, played ADO Den Haag the commentator made a big spiel about it being obviously too far to travel there and back on the day (about two and a half hours each way) so Roda had no other choice than to travel the day before and stay in a hotel. He also suggested that these vast distances were the reason that only a handful away supporters had been able to make it as nobody could be expected to make such a sacrifice for a 3 o’clock kick off by the way.

No wonder that we can’t get any of the excellent Dutch players that I see every week to come and play for us; the prospect of arriving back on the coach from Preston at four in the morning on a January Tuesday is obviously way beyond their sense of distance.

Back_The_Boss added 13:43 - Aug 29 .....another away trip in the Carling Cup. How it would be nice to have more home matches!
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