First off there are restrictions placed by the police on local teams playing at home on the same day, they just don’t have the officers available to police both teams in Sheffield on the same day for example. The 2 Manchester teams face a similar problem as well as do various pairings in London.

The league also imposes a rule that means each team must play home and away at least once over the holidays which muddies the water even more and then they insist that none of the “paired” teams can play each other over the holidays either you start to get the impression they’re just trying to be awkward.

There isn’t much detail on how they’ve managed to acheive this, but they do point out that Nottingham is one of the top 100 universities in the world, and in the UK’s top 10. Find out more about that here.

(Thanks for the tip off Lee)