With the first international break of the season now behind us, Championship clubs are about to embark upon the first of eight scheduled midweek matches announced when the fixtures were released in the summer.

The first round of those is next midweek on Tuesday and Wednesday (Watford host West Brom on Wednesday), and then the other seven rounds of midweek games are week commencing October 2, w/c October 23, w/c November 27, w/c December 11, w/c February 11, w/c March 4 and w/c April 8.

In those eight midweek sets of fixture, each club plays four at home and four away.

Of course, there are other games not played at weekends or that don’t kick off at 3pm: for example there are a round of matches on December 29, which is a Friday night, during that odd period between Christmas and New Year when you lose track of what day of the week it is.

Then there will be outliers - games played in midweek in isolation or in a smaller clutch of fixtures.

That’s because of things like cup runs, postponements, TV coverage etc

However, each club starts the season with eight scheduled midweek games when the first ball is kicked.

And, in terms of miles fans will have to travel for their four midweek games, supporters of Watford face an above-average trek.

Of course, each fan’s trip will be different based upon where they live or where they are departing from/returning to, but using the postcode for each club’s stadium as a fair comparison, Watford fans will travel 1,344 miles for their four scheduled midweek road trips.

That quartet of away games is Sunderland (522 miles), Swansea (382), Ipswich (184) and Norwich (256).

The average across the 24 Championship clubs is 1,220 miles.

It’ll come as no surprise that Plymouth fans face the longest trips across the four ‘regulation’ midweek games, a total of 1,738 miles including a mammoth 590-mile round trip for the game at Sheffield Wednesday.

However, that isn’t the biggest single midweek away trip on the list: that dubious honour goes to the fans of Norwich City who face a 626-mile journey to and from Swansea City on Wednesday October 4. Swansea supporters obviously face the same schlep, but they’re due to do it on a Saturday in April.

Canaries supporters have the second longest combined mileage to cover in the four midweek games with 1,642, closely followed by Swansea City (1,638).

At the other end of the scale, Rotherham supporters have come off best with only 846 miles to travel in their four midweek games.

West Brom (872), Birmingham (944) and Hull (956) are the only other clubs whose quartet of games have journeys that are in three figures.

Despite being the most northerly clubs in the Championship, both Middlesbrough (1,120) and Sunderland (1,086) fans face fewer midweek miles than Watford.

Only four sets of fans face a midweek journey longer than the Hornets’ 532-mile marathon to the Stadium of Light and back on October 4.

Because the game at QPR on the opening day of the season was switched from QPR’s Loftus Road to Vicarage Road, the Hornets now face four consecutive away Championship trips in January totalling more than 1,150 miles.

That figure could increase even further if they are drawn away in the FA Cup Third Round which will take place on the weekend of January 5/6/7.

However, if Watford were to win and progress to the Fourth Round then the league game at Sheffield Wednesday on January 27 would be postponed as that is the date for ties in that round.