The point is that the bulk of your support did not have to travel 3 - 4 hours to get to the local derby. If they put the game on too early and people hit roadworks you gonna have lots of angry fans who have paid £50 a ticket for a game they only saw 10 mins of. Its gonna cause trouble after.
Same thing happens in london as well, they try not to get 2 localish teams to play on the same day otherwise you sometimes get 4 sets of fans all meeting up at the larger train stations all together. Its not uncommon for me to see plenty of arsenal or tottenham fans on the trains out of paddington mixing with chelsea fans but never at the same time.
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