Clarets go the distance
Last updated : 30 May 2007 By Tony Scholes
 | Plymouth's Home Park - our longest journey of the season |
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With Crewe and a few midlands clubs thrown in as well it provided us with a reasonably good league for travelling to away games. Since then however, most of the group of north west clubs have either gone down or gone up - with the exception of Preston who have now perfected the art of staging their annual not going up party.
That's meant an ever increasing number of miles, but even I was astounded when I was told last week that next season's mileage could be double that from the 2000/01 season for a supporter based in Burnley. I found that very difficult to believe, especially given that we had two visits to Selhurst Park and one to Portsmouth that season, along with two other London fixtures.
That meant it was investigation time and with thanks to the AA's web site and route planners I've dismissed the theory out of hand but have calculated that next season we will be travelling over 1,200 miles more than we did seven years earlier.
It really has all changed, from a season when eleven of our away games involved a round trip of under 200 miles and another three were within the 300 mile limit. In total, to attend every away league game in the 2000/01 season you would have travelled just under 5,842 miles although that doesn't take into account the 3:15 p.m. postponement at Watford.
That 5,842 miles became 7,102 last season and although there isn't too much change for the coming season it has increased again to just over 7.131 miles making it the worst of the four leagues for a north west club. We can be thankful to Blackpool, Sheffield United and Scunthorpe for bringing some shorter journeys with them, but even though we've lost Southend, the introduction of Watford, Charlton and Bristol City has brought about the increase.
The distances have all been taken from the AA's route planner, travelling from ground to ground - and next season's mileage is made up as follows with the shortest distance first. The distances below are from ground to ground, one way.
| Preston | 21.02 |
| Blackpool | 38.31 |
| Barnsley | 44.67 |
| Sheffield Wednesday | 51.00 |
| Sheffield United | 54.76 |
| Stoke | 80.16 |
| Scunthorpe | 86.64 |
| Hull | 95.44 |
| Wolves | 105.76 |
| West Brom | 112.88 |
| Leicester | 122.39 |
| Coventry | 134.78 |
| Bristol City | 204.36 |
| Norwich | 209.23 |
| Watford | 216.01 |
| Cardiff | 220.65 |
| QPR | 231.98 |
| Ipswich | 236.76 |
| Colchester | 239.40 |
| Charlton | 239.73 |
| Crystal Palace | 249.79 |
| Southampton | 256.56 |
| Plymouth | 313.21 |