Scheduling English Football over the Christmas Period
G. Kendall (School of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Nottingham, UK)
We present a sports scheduling problem which is solved every year by the English football authorities, but has not been the subject of scientific research. Over the Christmas period every team has to play two matches (one at home and one away). In addition, the amount of travel has to be minimised. Our work aims to produce schedules that are superior to the schedules that were actually used. We will present an overview of the problem, the data collection that we have undertaken, our algorithm and the results, which show that it is possible to produce superior schedules.