Ahead of the postponed games, club administrators cried out over the fixture pileup and they had the right to do so. Let’s use reigning champions Enugu Rangers as a case study here.

The Antelopes started the season at home to Abia Warriors on Saturday, January 14 and travelled to Lafia in Nasawara to face Nasawara United FC four days in matchday two.

That to and fro trip took the champions 12 hours and four days later they hosted El-Kanemi Warriors FC at home.

Three days later, another weekend fixture saw them travel to Uyo to face Akwa United another six hours to and fro before their matchday five home game against Niger Tornadoes just four days later on Sunday, January 25.

Just four days later, they were scheduled to travel to face FC IfeanyiUbah on Thursday, February 2 at Nnewi before travelling back home to welcome Lobi Stars.

Before the midweek games where reschedule, Rangers would have spent approximately 24 hours travelling around the country to play these games in 19 games.

A first look at that and you wouldn’t think of it as a big deal, but putting the bad state of Nigerian roads, travelling conditions and the generally unfavourable environment in this country into consideration, you would know it’s a daunting task for an NPFL club.

The LMC, we have been made to understand scheduled the midweek games to try to match our league calendar with that of Europe’s and that’s not a bad idea.

But the Europeans play in way more favourable conditions than us in Nigeria, that’s why the LMC can schedule games like they do.

Players in Europe travel in the most comfortable and luxurious of buses trains for short distant away games and fly with their partner Airlines for distant match venues.

While travelling in the comfortable modes of transportation, these players can afford to rest in between the tight match schedules.

In Nigeria, this is not even possible as our gallop-filled road and tight busses would not allow players to sleep and rest properly. Players in foreign leagues have the best physiotherapeutic practices, equipment and trainers to help them recover from the marathon of games while we have none of that in Nigeria.

Between 2004 and 2016 more than five clubs had their team buses robbed while travelling for away games, highlighting the lack of security for the players and officials of NPFL sides.

ALSO READ: How Enyimba team bus was robbed

The LMC seem to have realised these setbacks which might have made them reschedule the fixtures. The LMC can only do little to improve the situations that have been listed above, they are not football problems, but societal issues.

What they must do is work around the situation in the best possible way they can.