Boxing day travel nightmare must end

For the second year running West Ham fans, players and staff face long journeys on Boxing day with reduced public transport services.

Hammers fans face a 460 mile round trip journey  from East London to Wales to face Swansea, the day after Christmas day but equally faced a 270 mile round trip last year when the Irons faced Aston Villa at Villa Park.

Long gone is the tradition of local derbies on Boxing day which some West Ham fans are upset about and want changed.

Glenn Thompson, who works for Atos, the IT company in charge of compiling the Premier League fixtures previously explained:

“You will find occasional local derbies are on Boxing Day. One of the things the clubs submit, along with their data requests, is the clubs they don’t wish to play on Boxing Day. You will get a lot of clubs who say they don’t want to play their local rivals on Boxing Day. There are a lot of reasons for that. Clubs will always get a bumper crowd on Boxing Day, no matter who they play, so they want the fixture on another Saturday to guarantee high revenue gates. It might be that, if they play their local derby and it’s a high category game, it will require a lot of police and, as it’s a bank holiday, it will incur additional police charges. The police may ask for certain fixtures not to be played on Boxing Day as well.”