FANS' VIEW: Football League fans' forum gave answers to fixture queries

Crawley Town's Belgium fans on Saturday in Redz Bar after the game.

The event was attended by supporters from all the football league clubs in London and the south east.

Guest speakers included the former referee Chris Foy and ex-West Ham and Chelsea player Scott Minto.

Also in attendance was the man responsible for putting together the fixture lists each season.

As you can imagine a lot of the questions were aimed at the fixtures man, as to why we have to travel to such far flung places like Morecambe on a Tuesday night.

The answers he gave actually made sense, and the reasons these long distance games happen midweek is because the clubs themselves would rather play their more local fixtures on a Saturday to attract more fans.

Unfortunately the whole evening was a little bit of a farce and was more of a Sky Sports sales pitch than a useful fans forum.

But even so it was certainly worth the trip just to see behind the scenes at the Sky Sports studios.

Talk about plush, marble floors and top notch fixtures and fittings. I can see where my Sky subscription money was spent, and certainly not on the football coverage!So we’ve finally achieved it again, a home win!

To be honest Leyton Orient were like lambs to the slaughter and I really feel for those young players who through no fault of their own have been thrusted into the O’s first team. Crawley took full advantage with three headed goals in the first half to secure the points and with it football league status for a seventh season.

What was slightly disappointing was the fact we couldn’t build on the 3-0 half-time lead in the second half. As I really felt our record football league win (5-1 v Barnsley) was their to be had a go at. But it wasn’t to be.

A result this Saturday at Newport and we can look to secure a comfortable midtable finish and with it a successful first season for Dermot and Matt.

After the game I met up with Tony Kerkhove and co from our Belgium supporters group in the Redz Bar. What a fantastic effort those guys make, they actually travel over to quite a few games each season.

Tony has been coming since our conference days, his first ever Reds game was against Forest Green Rovers where the attendance was around 500. It’s fair to say we have come a long way since those days.