AS MERSEYSIDE employers brace themselves for a sudden mid-afternoon epidemic of diseases affecting their employees’ children and aged grandmothers this afternoon, my mind turns to other matches afflicted by daft kick-off times.

Not the common-or-garden Saturday lunchtime or Sunday afternoon fare dished up at the whim of the television companies, but the really weird, what-are-we-doing-at-a-football-match experiences whose number will be swelled by watching Sparta Prague at 6pm on a Thursday evening.

Let me take you back to November and December of 1973. This was the build-up to the three-day week introduced by the government as a result of the mineworkers’ work to rule, which ran down coal supplies and led to a period of largely unpredictable power cuts.

This industrial relations crisis led to two important developments: a baby boom in the autumn of 1974; and more seriously, early kick-offs for football matches to save the energy consumed by floodlights.

This went on for several months, but the games which stick in my mind are the League Cup games against Sunderland and Hull City in those dark winter days.

For the Third Round tie at Roker Park the kick-off was brought forward to around 2.15 on a Wednesday afternoon.