LOMAS ON STAGS: Debate already raging over new kick-off time experiment

But, in the current climate, with all of us facing huge rising costs, it may well end up being needs must both at home and at the football club we support.

Tradition dictates football should largely be a Saturday 3pm activity – a premise savagely torn apart from the cash-greedy Premier League for many years.

The reward for getting into the top flight as a supporter is never quite knowing what day your fixture will be played due to television schedules which prevents you booking hotels and travel well ahead.

The lower leagues have had far less of that. But this is a moment in our history that is much bigger than football.

With some people facing bills so beyond them at the supermarket, petrol pump and on utility bills and rising mortgages, this country is at crisis point with the Government inevitably throwing financial sticking plasters at the wrong areas.

The costs of staging a football match for thousands of people to enjoy is not immune from these rises and has to cut its cloth accordingly.

If the majority accept it – and anyone who has bought a season ticket and can no longer go is adequately compensated, which would be awful for them in itself – then maybe this will become the ‘new norm’ for a while.

As a country we quickly had to get used to some strange ‘new norms’ during Covid with isolation and masking up.

It will be interesting to see if football now throws us up a new one. Yes, for those who like a pint, it’s two hours less in the pub pre-match. But it is also two extra hours post match to celebrate or hold an inquest into a result.

On the pitch there is much to celebrate with Stags unbeaten at home and having just chalked up three superb successive away victories.

But no one should assume three points are a given on Friday when new manager Keith Curle brings his bottom placed Hartlepool side to the One Call Stadium in search of their first win of the season.

Curle is a wily operator and will make life difficult and Stags will need to stay patient if they don’t break through early.