POV: Let’s Give Saturday 3pm to Grassroots! (Nick Goff)

In our DAILY column POV – professional football punter Nick Goff on the Saturday 3pm kick-off, and why it should be given to grassroots football…

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As anyone who follows my X account will be able to attest, I’m not someone who is generally short of opinions. So when William at Star asked if I’d mind writing a “Point of View” piece for the website, the trickiest part was which point of view to focus on.

I’ve plumped for something that seems to evoke wild emotions among football fans at the mere mention of the subject, and that is kick off times. This is one area where most football fans do not like any messing with tradition. If I only have one go at this column I may as well go with something controversial!

The tradition, of course, is that football matches in Britain kick off at 3.00pm on a Saturday. But why? Well, it dates back to the good(?) old days where working class men would be down mines or in factories on Saturday mornings. Saturday mornings were a staple part of the working week in the 1920s and 1930s, when football’s popularity was on its meteoric rise.

So 3pm, after the men had finished their morning’s work, became a sensible time. But here’s the first thing. Even that wasn’t a set in stone tradition, because no one had floodlights until the 1950s and in the winter months it gets dark well before 5.00, so kick offs needed to be moved forward.

Nevertheless, 3.00 Saturday became known as football time, and to this day we have a TV blackout in place whereby no 3.00 game can be televised live, so as not to undermine efforts to get people to attend a local game.

Very few Premier League games actually take place at this time now, though. This is because Sky and TNT have rights to show ever more games, and on top of that multiple teams are in European action on Thursday evenings so have to move their following games to Sunday. We end up with around three 3pm Premier League games in most weeks.

So here’s my point of view: Let’s not have any Premier League games at 3.00 on a Saturday. Let’s instead make that the time of grassroots football. The EFL and non-league should have full ownership of Saturday 3pm. That’s real football, so play it at a real football time.

And I say real football there as a fan of a Premier League club. I am lucky to support a club in the elite league and to watch the very best players in the world on a weekly basis. In an alternative simulation of life my club could be languishing in the lower leagues now and I wouldn’t be afforded the luxury of watching the elite.

The price I feel I prepared to pay for this privilege is to have matches at 5.30 Saturday or 2.00 Sunday or 8.00 Monday evening. That’s when Premier League football should be played, to a watching audience of billions worldwide.

Yes, it can be a pain for away fans having to get long distances for early games or getting home from late ones, but that should be a Premier League problem. When I see Exeter fans needing to get back from Carlisle after an evening game, my heart huts for them. If you’ve been to watch Newcastle at Bournemouth, and watched billions of pounds of footballers, my heart doesn’t hurt – you’re privileged.

When the next TV deal is signed I have a feeling this will happen. Let’s have every single Premier League match televised in the UK (as they are abroad anyway, which is also ridiculous but I digress slightly) at every weekend time imaginable except 3.00pm Saturday, and let’s return to 95%+ of EFL games in that 3pm slot they deserve.

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