A large crow and a yellow ball

I was in London last weekend, so I watched Dulwich Hamlet entertain Bognor Regis Town for a top of the table game.

Sol Pinnock gives his marker the slip

A post on the unofficial forum advised that the turnstiles would be opening early, as a large crow was expected, an observation that caused much merriment amongst both sets of supporters. In the event 717 people turned up, Dulwich's best attendance for some seasons, but no crow, just a few pigeons.

It was a bright, sunny day, the low sun normal for January, with the pitch facing directly into the sun. I would have preferred the sun behind me, but Dulwich won the toss, and sensibly elected to make Bognor play into the sun. I therefore took a position at the side of the pitch for the first half.

It is not always bright in January, so the Ryman League require that a yellow ball be used during the winter months. They only require a single ball to be available, so when the yellow ball went out of the ground, and took some time to find, we carried on with the normal red and white ball. Not that I found it any more difficult to see ...

Lewis Goncalves keeps an eye on the yellow ball ...

... whilst Junior Kadi has no problem tracking the red and white one.

... and in the North, where you might expect it to be darker, you will not see a yellow ball, as the EvoStik League uses the red and white ball all year round. It's grim up north.

I also met my friend John from the Southwark News, the excellent local paper - he usually taps me for a photo when I see him at a game. I will talk more about press photos in future posts, but the days of local papers having armies of photographers are long gone: the club that can provide a couple of press ready photos is more likely to have pictures in the paper. I usually send John a link to my web collection, and he indicates which high resolution copies he wants, but this time I knew I may not have the collection ready in time for press, so I sent three I chose myself.

Here are the three I offered for the paper.

Frankie Sawyer shields the ball

Phil Wilson makes a save

Peter Adenyi holds off his marker

You can judge whether I picked the best of the collection here.