If you're not making the trip up to Brunton Park on Sunday, I can only sympathise with you for making what is probably the sane decision.
Many Exeter City fans who will be in attendance at Carlisle United will not be able to get back to Devon until 4.30am on Monday – not exactly ideal for those due in for work around four hours later.
Indeed, those people will need plenty of
#MondayMotivation, as Twitter calls it, to get through the day on a complete lack of sleep.
Coincidentally enough, Twitter is also where a number of fans who have not travelled will have to follow the game (although there's always the option of my live blog online).
That's due to the quite frankly ludicrous situation of Sky electing to only show one of the semi-final first legs on an actual TV channel.
Unfortunately for City fans, they now need to press the red button to watch the action in Cumbria unfold.
With two northern sides hosting two southern sides in the play-offs, it already seems a bizarre choice to have them both kicking off at 6.30pm on a Sunday evening.
I can understand the reasoning for having both matches kick off at the same time – it avoids any accusations of favouritism about one team getting a longer break than the other in the build-up to May 28's final, but the choice to have them both kick off on a Sunday night is another example of football's hierarchy putting fans last.
City fans are now expected to either fork out for a hotel room in Carlisle at short notice, also taking a day off work in the process, or make the almost 700-mile round trip in one day for 90 minutes of football.
It's absolute madness to expect fans to do that on a Sunday night and, like I say, I sympathise with those who have decided against making the trip – at least they probably thought they would be able to watch a City game from the comfort of their own living rooms.
Yet this is not the case for a large number of fans now, as well, because apparently 90 minutes' worth of overblown guff after a Premier League game followed by a repeat of Goals on Sunday is too important not to give up for the other semi-final.
Sky's much-trumpeted Now TV service, where you can buy daily, weekly or monthly passes to get access to Sky Sports, is entirely useless in this scenario, as is Sky Go, due to the fact that neither carry the option of watching the red button instead.
So fans will now be left following the game through different methods, or trying to avoid the result at all costs so they can watch the replay of the game when it does eventually air on Sky – close enough to resemble a plot of a 1973 episode of The Likely Lads.
Unfortunately, it appears that, whilst much has improved in terms of modern technology in football, the decision makers of the game seem to think lower-league fans have not moved on in the way they follow football for 44 years.
Enough is enough, and it's time to treat supporters with a little more respect.
TAKEN FROM THE EXETER RAG
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Thu May 11, 2017 8:20 pm
