Let’s have international football on a Saturday afternoon

After the disappointment of the World Cup earlier in the summer – an experience I am still trying to forget – I looked forward with new football hope to the start of the qualifiers for the Euro 2016 tournament.

New players, a new start and something to get your footballing teeth into as far as England are concerned, surely.

But it was with great disappointment that I – someone who always likes an ordered life – discovered I was going to have to wait until Monday for the first competitive game.

As a Burnley fan, follower, supporter, devotee – take your pick but they all apply – I have grown used to the footballing norm of Saturday at 3pm and Tuesday at 7-45pm evaporating.

TV companies pump so much money into the game that there is little choice but to bow your knee and nod in agreement every time they mess about with the fixtures.

But what has happened to international football fixtures?

When did England last kick off a competitive Wembley international on a Saturday afternoon?

When did all teams competing in the same tournament stop playing on the same day?

When did someone decide that playing the first round of qualifiers for a major international tournament should be spread over three days, none of them a Saturday?

Or, as others in my own home would ask, when did someone decide that football was more important than Coronation Street?

And it doesn’t get any better between now and the end of the current qualification fixtures.

Of the nine games two are on Saturdays – yippee – but both in the early evening unless the UEFA Website is lying to me.

Two kick off the weekend with Friday night games, two are on Sundays and the others are on a Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Hang on a minute, whatever happened to Wednesdays?