Amateur status

I was speaking to a friend from University, and mentioned that one of his lecturers was now a Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Not having been involved with University affairs for nearly 20 years, he asked what one of those was - I suggested it was a Vice-Chancellor who had lost his amateur status.

The big news of the weekend for supporters of Prescot Cables (bigger than losing at Bamber Bridge - we have done that before) was that the club had decided to revert to amateur status. As a Community Interest Company, the club is not able to take on debt, and with sponsorship difficult to come by in the current economic climate, it would be far from prudent to do so if this were allowed. This is of course adjusting expenditure in line with income rather than a change of status. Some clubs can afford to pay players and do, some cannot afford to and do not. Some cannot afford to and do - and eventually come a cropper.

In the past, things were different: until 1974, clubs were classified as Amateur or Professional, with the FA Amateur Cup for the amateur clubs. In some areas, clubs competed in amateur leagues, like the Isthmian League in and around London, and the Northern League in Northumberland and County Durham. In other areas, Amateur and Professional clubs competed together in leagues like the Lancashire Combination. The distinction between Amateur and Professional clubs ended mainly because, by the late 1960s, it was increasingly difficult to identify which were really amateur.

The distinction in football was not as rigid as in sports like athletics and rugby union. Speaking to, or in one case even sharing a railway compartment with, a representative from a professional rugby league club would attract a life ban from rugby union. By the 1990s, the distinction in these sports too had been removed: in rugby union for the same reasons as in football; and after a few years in athletics where the rules of "amateur" athletics entailed paying tens of thousands of pounds in prizes and appearance fees into trust funds, whilst professional athletes, whose amateur status was permanently lost, would win prizes of a couple of hundred pounds in events like Highland Games.

It remains to be seen what effect this will have on performances, as some players will undoubtedly move on, but amateur sport has a long and proud history to the highest level, and it is a step a number of other clubs may (or should) be considering as a response to the current financial situation.

Now, this is supposed to be a photo blog, and there was a game at the weekend. I like visiting Bamber Bridge, they are easy to get to, with a good tea bar and a couple of well kept real ales in the clubhouse. The weather was unusually warm and bright for the middle of October.

I was getting 1/2000s shutter speeds at ISO 400, which I usually think of as a thing of the past by the end of September.

It was the first outing for this season's away kit - the same PaxSport design as the home kit, and a photo friendly shade of blue in the sun, here worn by Leon Clowes, on loan from Wrexham.

We will see in the next few weeks how well the colour shows up in the gloomier light of November and December.

The game got off to a promising start, with a goal for Cables from Liam Pearson - here watching the ball head to the net after beating Bridge's goalkeeper.

The second half was less happy, with Cables proving unable to hold on to a lead for the third league game in succession.

After the straightforward lighting in the first half, the sun was shining along the pitch by the second half, and the rise in temperature was giving a light haze. This is easy to get rid of in Photoshop Elements using the Levels tool, in the same way we can for misty rain, leaving some striking backlit shots.

The rest of the shots from the game can be seen here.