Fixtures 2008/9-No New Year's Day Match !

All football fans throughout the length and breadth of England will be waiting to hear this Monday (16th June) what lies ahead for their club. The fixtures will be released at 10am this Monday.

Clarets fans will be no exception as we eagerly await to hear what the first game of the season will be and when we play our local rivals, Preston & Blackpool.

We would of course bring you the full list of fixtures if we were allowed to by the money grabbing DataCo!

Football DataCo Ltd is a British company in the football industry that grants licences to third parties (such as newspapers and independent websites) allowing them to reproduce certain intellectual property (such as fixture lists and statistics) owned by the FA Premier League, The Football League, the Scottish Premier League and the Scottish Football League.

Football DataCo is wholly owned by guess who? Yep the FA Premier League and The Football League!

DataCo pathetically charges a standard fee for the reproduction of Fixture lists, which currently stands at a ridiculous £266 plus VAT to print the fixtures of one English club.

Vital Burnley have got better things to do with their money so instead on the 16th June we will simply provide a full link to the fixtures on the Official Site and highlight a few of the key games including our opening game, our final game and those all important local derbies against Preston and Blackpool.

So shove that up your **** DataCo!!!

One thing we can advise already is that there will be no match on New Year's Day this season.

Why are there no New Year's Day games?

Football League Fixtures Secretary, David Coolson explains on the Official Football League website:

'The FA Cup is traditionally staged on the first Saturday in January and this season the first day of 2009 falls on a Thursday which is a day when we wouldn't normally have a league programme on. It is a shame, but we can't schedule matches on New Years Eve because the Police Forces up and down the Country would not accept them because it is undoubtedly the busiest night of the year for them.

There was an alternative, which was considered but wouldn't have gained us anything and that was playing on 1st January and then on Sunday 4th January and putting the FA Cup back a week but that created its own problem with scheduling so it was decided to leave things as they are for this season.'

The Football League site's article 'How the Fixture List is Compiled' can be found via the link below and it has also been reproduced on the Official Burnley FC site:

How the Fixture List is Compiled-CLICK HERE

Anyway we will soon know what fate holds for us in terms of the fixtures for 2008/9 so watch out for Vital Burnley announcements this Monday.




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