Friday, January 2nd. Twelve-thirty kick-off. The first early start of the season.
There is something disorienting about playing football at lunchtime. The rhythms are wrong. The body is wrong. The light is wrong.
Premier League football is designed to be played at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, when the fans have had their pre-match pint and the players have had their pre-match meal and the sun, if it exists at all in an English winter, is at the right angle to make the pitch look green instead of grey.
Twelve-thirty on a Friday is a television slot, not a football time. Sky Sports wanted it. The league obliged. And three thousand Crystal Palace supporters, who had left South London before dawn, adjusted their entire day accordingly.
I arrived at Beckenham at seven. The building was already alive. Rebecca's fitness team was setting up the pre-match monitoring stations.
