Friday night rugby

It seems a truism of modern rugby that Friday night rugby is crap and in response to this one of this season's semi-finals will be on a Friday night. The reason given for this is that they don't want to have both semis on the same day, and if they play Saturday and Sunday then either Sarries or Saints could have a short turnaround to their European finals. I've got to say if I'd been planning to go on the weekend since the start of the season and now with only a week left to sort different arrangements I had to say leave work and travel 150 miles in rush hour traffic to get to the game I'd be more than cross. This is shoddy management from PRL, and why the Amlin final can't be shunted against the need of the AP I don't understand either. I can understand not having a semi-final on the Sunday, but the option then for me is to double up games on the Saturday and if the TV companies don't like it tough, it's not like rugby administrators haven't done plenty else to annoy TV companies and this one is actually important as opposed to some of the piddling around in negotiating the new Euro comps.

You're quite right, I had allowed myself to focus overly on those fans planning to attend live and now at very short notice (say 10 days) suddenly finding they had to get a shifty on after work on Friday, rather than travel as planned at the weekend. I had too thought of all the difficulties that might have caused given this wasn't in the plans for nearly a year to travel arrangements, work arrangements, child care, ticket arrangements now some who would have been going can't. And in all that I hadn't considered the ex-pat market out in Israel, frankly I can only apologise

Any day that's not Saturday seems to me to be a crap day for watching sport live. Though much of that is based on a Mon-Fri working culture which doesn't hold as much anymore, and I appreciate many observe a different working week. Sunday public transport is rubbish, and travel after work on Fridays in rush hour is also less than appealing, but forcing people to drive is perhaps less of an issue now you can't get to most grounds without a car anyway. I still stupidly dream of heading on the train to the town/city in question and then to a nice cafe for brunch, papers and coffee before moving onto a nice pub before taking a 10-15 minute stroll to the ground, and that with good train services running before and after the game. I'd also favour returning to the pub after the game but realise some might need to be heading home by then.