diff --git a/.github/workflows/serverlist-validate.sh b/.github/workflows/serverlist-validate.sh
index b43e803e0..50b2da712 100755
--- a/.github/workflows/serverlist-validate.sh
+++ b/.github/workflows/serverlist-validate.sh
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ echo "Checking that all the game servers are listed in all csv files"
 echo "this check will ensure serverlist.csv has the same number of lines (-2 lines) as the other csv files"
 # count the number of lines in the serverlist.csv
 cd "lgsm/data" || exit
-serverlistcount="$(wc -l < serverlist.csv)"
+serverlistcount="$(tail -n +2 serverlist.csv | wc -l)"
 echo "serverlistcount: $serverlistcount"
 # get list of all csv files starting with ubunutu debian centos
 csvlist="$(ls -1 | grep -E '^(ubuntu|debian|centos|rhel|almalinux|rocky).*\.csv$')"