I remember the days when you could tuck a fixtures card into your wallet or slip it into the glove box of your car for safe keeping throughout the year.   Nice and compact and easy to read.

The great challenge was choosing which one to keep. You were in danger of tripping over the pile of twenty different types of cards, from the local butcher's to the bank that you hadn't held an account with since decimalisation. Everyone got in on the act, hoping they'de get to spend a year with you and your footy team.

Today though, the AFL charge so much for someone to reproduce "their" fixture, those reluctantly forking over the blood money want to make sure they get their monies worth. As a result, the bastards are massive.  They're covered in advertising and you'd be lucky if you could fold the thing up and . They draw their  concepts of convieneince from the people  who produce the Pocket Oxford Dictionary - all 18cm x 10cm of it. 

I got the Foxtel fixture giude out of the paper this morning and it took six of us to unfold the bloody thing. Then I had to get up on a step ladder to read it. And that's just to get to F for Freo.  Apparently you can't get hold of a cherry picker in Adelaide at the moment, they're all being hired out to Crows supporters wanting to know when their team plays next.

It's madness. Sure, you know what time the game is going to start but you rock up an hour late because you were going toe to toe with a giant fixtures sheet. And then there's the ever present risk of paper cuts. Someone is going to lose an arm.

 It's time the AFL opened the flood gates on the fixtures cards again. So only the best cards survive and people aren't forced to hang on to 12 foot high advertising posters just so footy supporters can plot their road to the final or, in hard times, find out when their team will be playing Melbourne.