There have been reasons for it and they made sense to a large degree.
In fact, there is an argument to be had that we should know nothing at all about pre-season games.
That they should be like training sessions – just go away and do your work and we will see how it all turns out when you play a proper match.
Although that is not much use for a newspaper and website like ourselves.
The behind-closed-doors approach is not totally new.
There have been games in the past which have been kept under wraps.
I recall counterparts from the opposite team’s newspaper asking me about it before a game a few summers back and saying that, if they could not have details, then surely they could at least print the final score.
That seemed to miss the point. The result is often one of the least important aspects about a friendly. Especially if you do not have the line-ups.
So Albion have gone under-wraps or sort of half under-wraps for much of this summer.
It did not feel like they did anything particularly unusual in games against Las Palmas and Stoke.
One did not notice any players out of position and there were no mystery men named as A Trialist on the team sheet.
The approach was debated this week on national media, including Monday Night Football on BBC Radio 5 Live.
Would Albion even attract any fans if they went on a more public long-haul overseas trip, Stephen Warnock asked somewhat cynically.
He obviously has not experienced Albion and Kaoru Mitoma in Tokyo.
But now, after the public run-out against Southampton, comes the final dress rehearsal.
This one should be and has to be very public. Make it real. Get people excited.
Maybe it also serves as a trial run for some matchday operations off the pitch.
It tends to be the one game from which you can really draw a few conclusions as to how the season might go.
From the multi-coloured eyesore against Southampton back in 2014 which preceded the half-season under Sami Hyypia to the 5-1 rout of Espanyol which came ahead of the campaign in which the Seagulls finished sixth.
Leandro Trossard’s hat-trick against the Catalans hinted at the form we would see from him in the following months.
And Espanyol were relegated so it wasn’t a bad guide for them, either.
There was the 3-1 win over new European champions Chelsea ahead of a 2012-13 season which should really have ended in automatic promotion.
Maybe they would have done had Vicente stayed as fit as he looked against Frank Lampard, John Terry and company.
There was a 4-0 dismissal of an albeit under-strength Villarreal ahead of last season’s eighth place.
There are exceptions. Losing 2-0 at home to Getafe, for instance, before a decent 2021-22 season.
The 1-1 with Rayo Vallecano two years ago was not a great sign ahead of the first ever European season.
Not all of those games were the final friendly but they were all dress rehearsals at the Amex and felt like they meant something.
Even the 3-2 defeat by Atletico Madrid just before going into the Premier League season.
_(Image: Tony Wood)_
Or the first sight of Tomer Hemed’s slow-motion penalty technique against Sevilla in 2015.
The penalty decision that day was a joke but it gave us a preview of what was to be a familiar sight from 12 yards over the following couple of years.
And now? It feels like we know most of Albion’s starting XI for the season.
The back four looks like being Mats Wieffer, Lewis Dunk, Jan Paul van Hecke and Max De Cuyper.
Yasin Ayari and one other in midfield.
Yankuba Minteh and Kaoru Mitoma out wide.
Danny Welbeck will have a big part to play at No.9, Matt O’Riley has had a lot of time in the No.10 role and Georginio Rutter fits in there somewhere too.
Always remembering you do not play the same eleven men in every game or for 90 minutes.
Trying to predict Hurzeler’s XI for the start of the new season feels like missing the point to a degree.
No one made better use of substitutions and was less likely to name an unchanged XI than the Albion head coach last season.
We need to see more of the Greek duo as well as Oliver Boscagli and Diego Coppola and we will.
It is a long season and players come and go in terms of presence and form.
When looking at possible line-ups and how the team will fit together, it is perhaps easy to overlook the part Ferdi Kadioglu and James Milner can play.
They have been out of sight and out of mind for so long.
Wolfsburg were mid-table in the Bundesliga last season and, in their most recent -friendly, were 4-0 down at Feyenoord.
The game was abandoned ten minutes from time due to a medical emergency in the crowd.
Today’s game will be a good scene-setter.
History suggests it may well give us a decent idea of how the new season will start.