WE’RE approaching the time of year again where the bandwagon starts rolling – should we or should we not have double Super League fixtures at Easter?

I remember this time last year coaches were mooting that playing two games over the bank holiday period would become a thing of the past from this season onwards.

But here we are, a week away from asking Super League’s precious assets – the players – to put their bodies on the line twice as much as they would normally do in the space of a few days.

The sequence is actually worse this year for some players due to the full season of Thursday night fixtures.

As an example, by the time Wolves head to Wigan for one of the most demanding physical battles of the season on Thursday, April 16, it will be Tony Smith’s team’s fourth game in 15 days.

Worse still, that clash will be the fourth outing in 14 days for Wigan, due to their opening Easter game against St Helens being on Good Friday while Wolves’ trip to Widnes Vikings will be the night before.

An Easter double – or more – is a long-held tradition whereby clubs would attempt to capitalise on bumper attendances over the holiday period.

In decades past, that ploy was often successful - but that was before the world became a much smaller place and there were not as many alternative leisure opportunities as there are today.

The six games in 17 days played by Wire around Easter in 1954 was not unique to that year, with the sixth game being as important as the RL Challenge Cup Final against Halifax at Wembley.

Incidentally, prop Danny Naughton and back rower Harry Bath played in all six games.

There were 22,658 crammed into Wilderspool to see Warrington play Leigh on the Easter Monday, two days after nearly 15,000 attended the home clash with Whitehaven while the day before the team had also played in front of 15,527 at Widnes.

But that was then, and this is now.

Rugby league these days is a different intensity with heightened physicality played on harder pitches by full-time athletes who are fine-tuned scientifically.

And, with many players likely to play each of the fixtures over the Easter sequence, the pressures placed on their bodies by short recovery time is detrimental to their well-being and out of context with match switches made already this year to allow players a longer break between games.

The second matches of Easter have brought many heavy one-way scorelines in past seasons, something supporters don’t enjoy watching and something rugby league’s ‘New Era’ of ‘Every Minute Matters’ is trying to eradicate.

Whichever way you look at Easter scheduling, it doesn’t add up.