John Nicholson

Got that Friday feeling?

This season, for the first time, Friday night is international night.

This is a very progressive move and one which even traditionalists should welcome.

What better way to kick off your weekend than spending Friday night in the pub watching some international football?

Friday is a special feeling; sometimes you crawl to the end of the week on your hands and knees; clinging to the thought of Friday like it's a life raft in a stormy ocean. Other times it comes around quickly. Either way, there are few of us who don't welcome its arrival and step out on a Friday night with a fizz in our step and joy in our hearts.

The end of a working week brings us all much relief and many of us take the opportunity to have good blow-out in the bar or at home. The presence of international football will make it a really special night and that's how it should be. International games are a different breed of animal; a more exotic beast which should have its own dedicated night, separate from the normal football world.

If you're planning to go to the England game (the only home game played on a Friday), it will more than likely not be so fantastic. Many can't get time off work to make the journey to London in time for kick-off. This is one of the many reasons having the national stadium at Wembley was always a stupid idea. If and it's a big if, we need a national stadium at all, it should have been situated within two hours drive of 80% of England's population and not in the most over-populated, traffic-choked part of the south-east. Had it been built with the requirements of fans in mind, a Friday night kick-off would have been very do-able for many more thousands of people.

But the FA chose to spend more money than any other FA on earth on a stadium in an unsuitable location and then to help pay for it assigned the most visible seats to the least visible fans who would rather enjoy the champagne bar and oysters than return to watch the second half, leaving great expanses of empty seats.

Despite the Wembley fiasco, the game is played less for the paying public and more for the TV audience these days and for the TV audience, Friday night is a great night for football.

Evening games always have a better atmosphere. The pubs have been open all afternoon so after knocking-off early, there's plenty of time to get into a proper drunken rage when England fail to perform and then ring up 606 and shout "there's no passion anymore" very loudly.

All joking aside, the most important aspect of UEFA's new Friday night games initiative is that it leaves Saturday afternoon free for the lower leagues to attract larger crowds than they would if the England game was on TV at the same time.

The lower leagues need all the money they can get and with the top two divisions not playing games it's a chance for all of us to catch a game at our local lower-league side. Remember them? They're where the soul of football resides.

Indeed, I would argue that this is something of a duty. We've all got excuses when the full programme is playing as normal but on these international breaks we really owe it to them to put a bit of cash across the turnstiles and support them.

To this extent there is a non-league day campaign encouraging us all to get out and support our local non-league teams on Saturday. It is a noble cause and one which will also provide the perfect antidote to the boiling frustration that England games can provoke like little else.

There'll be no players with super-injunctions, ther''ll be no paying through the nose for over-priced food and drink; you won't have to sit in a traffic jam for two hours. You can watch some football played by 22 men of limited talent but great endeavour and it won't cost you an arm and leg. What's not to like about all of that?

This is a win-win weekend for the football fan. Thank God it's Friday.

Johnny has got a new book out: We Ate All The Pies: How Football Swallowed Britain Whole. Read all about it here.

And buy it from here.