No doubt tomorrow, there will be six Coaches bemoaning the annual Easter fixture turnaround.

I know the game is faster, but it is also now more professional too.

Apologies if this has been done before, but it still amazes me about Hull's fixtures in March and April 1985.

As the 150 year Greatest Team Nominations come in, many are being supplied from this team, that included Kemble, O'Hara, Leuluai, Schofield, Sterling, Crooks, Muggleton and Norton. To me this was our greatest team, yet that season we only won the Yorkshire Cup, lost to Wigan in the epic 1985 Final and came 6th in the league.

Just check out the dates, including 10 games in 18 days in April. No wonder we didn't finish higher in the league.

Extract from Hull FC Fixtures 1984/85 Season

March
Sun, 03 W 40 - 14 Leigh, The Boulevard,
Sat, 09 D 6 - 6 Widnes, The Boulevard (CC Quarter Final)
Wed, 13 W19 - 12 Widnes, Naughton Park (CC QF Replay)
Sun, 17 W 30 - 8 Oldham, The Boulevard
Fri, 22 L18 - 47 St Helens, Knowsley Road
Tue, 26 L18 - 26 Castleford, Wheldon Road
Fri, 29 W17 - 14 Wigan Warriors, The Boulevard
Sun, 31 L2 - 20 Halifax, Thrum Hall

April
Sat, 06 D10 - 10 Castleford, Headingley Leeds (CC Semi Final)
Mon, 08 D12 - 12 D Barrow, Craven Park
Wed, 10 W22 - 16 Castleford, Headingley (CC Semi Final Replay)
Fri, 12 L12 - 36 Hull Kingston Rovers, The Boulevard
Sun, 14 W18 - 8 Castleford, The Boulevard
Wed, 17 W24 - 18 Bradford Northern, The Boulevard
Fri, 19 L4 - 40 Wigan, Central Park
Sat, 20 W64 - 18 Workington Town, Derwent Park
Sun, 21 W58 - 26 Hunslet, The Boulevard
Tue, 23 L22 - 26 Bradford Northern, The Provident Stadium
Sun, 28 L12 - 46 Wigan, Central Park, Wigan (Premiership)

Would love to see how the current crop of Coaches would deal with that schedule?

Perosnally I think the days of playing twice at Easter is outdated, the Easter Monday games are generally dire quality with teams patched up. I remember going to a top of the table clash with Hudds the other year (2012?) And even though both teams were in form it was slow paced and dire. Would rather see one round of games spread out over the weekend for SKY.

I really hope the clubs do not bleat on about Easter, afterall they decided to extend the season with the stupid 3 groups of 8 after a few games

Wasnt a problem when I started going at the Boulevard. Used to play Sunday aft and Weds night

Just because there was quick fixture turn around in the old days doesn't make it right, not everything back then was splendid. The 2 fixtures over Easter needs binning ASAP.

The above example wasn't splendid. It was mad and we paid the price for being successful and also drawing both the Quarter Final and Semi Final of the Challenge Cup, getting to the Yorkshire Cup Final earlier in the season and playing 30 league games in a season.

It was so mad, that it may have been this season, that Hull tried to arrange playing two league games simultaneously to prove a point about having a request for extending the season turned down.

I was just pointing out that playing two games in 4 or 5 days shouldn't necessarily be a problem for full time professional squads of players and feel that come this evening it will be an easy excuse for every defeated Coach.

I'm not against a change to one round of games being across the Easter weekend. Until then, the Easter programme is just a feature of the competition and I wish the clubs and Coaches would get on with it and play the competition accordingly.

Bearing in mind we had a massive first team squad back then (30+ first team players), no salary cap to worry about so generally had a higher quality in depth and there was an awful lot of wasted time in the scrums still there wasn't anything like the amount of ground covered, not even close.
Forwards didn't have to make dummy runs, I'm not saying the game wasn't hard, not saying it wasn't physical and knackering, of course it was but with huge squads back then plus your A team and an established quality Colts side playing a Sunday/Wednesday every third week IF you got through to every comp final (max 45 or 46 games) wasn't as demanding as people think hence why you could still be effectively a semi-pro and play 30+ games a season as a forward.
Backlogs due to postponed matches or draws in cup matches was the killer though.
82/83 season Steve Evans played 45 matches excluding Internationals and friendlies..that season we had 16 forwards (incl 3 hookers) that played first team games.
Asking the players to play games closer than 4 full days apart is just crazy and actually endangers them, long gone should be the days of entertainment first and player welfare second..IMO of course.