Concentrating on the League this year, Brian

Last season, it sometimes felt like a case of "It's Tuesday, it must be Warrington Town", as we met them in the FA Cup and Doodson Sport Cup, as well as the usual meetings in the League. This season, their place has been taken by Skelmersdale United, who we faced in the first of our fixtures, in the FA Trophy at the weekend. Still to come are the New Year and Easter fixtures in the League, the Doodson Sport Cup, and a possible fixture in the Liverpool Senior Cup if they beat Burscough in the previous round.

With heavy rain having caused extensive flooding and disruption throughout the north of England earlier in the week, it was a relief to have a couple of brighter drier days at the end of the week. Normally on a sunny day, I set the camera to sports mode, and let the apertures and shutter speeds sort themselves out. Sometimes I have a senior moment, and I spent the first 5 minutes of this game shooting in shutter priority mode, with the speed from the last time I used it, 1/200s. This gave the effects - especially movement blur in the player's feet - we do not normally look for in light like this.

Luke Edwards

Having spotted my error, I settled in to more conventional shooting. I usually shoot from the same side of the ground for both halves - when I am trying to get everyone in the album, it means I am closest to the players on the right in the first half ...

Alejandro Barba San Felipe

... and those on the left in the second.

Joe Fielding

It falls apart when the second half substitutes are introduced on the side I have been concentrating on in the first half, but we cannot expect tactics to be determined by photographic requirements.

When there is an incident in the game, there is an element of luck in whether I capture it. Practice means I am pointing the camera in the right direction, with the auto focus point over one of the players involved, but we have seen how the auto focus can wander a bit, and it is luck to press the shutter at the right moment. So, I was quite pleased to capture Skelmersdale's Tony Rendell (a former Prescot player) bringing down Mario Bonetta for a penalty.

I was a little surprised Tony Rendell was sent off for denying a goal scoring opportunity, we can see the edge of the penalty area in the picture, and I think the goalkeeper was on his line and in a good position to make a save. Not that it did us any good, we were unable to overcome 10 men in the second half.

I am not sure where to stand for the resulting penalty. Staying in position behind the goal gives a good view of the penalty taker, as here with Jonathon Bathurst.

Despite a good firm shot, Skelmersdale's Sam Ashton went the right way, which gave me the feeling (correct as it turned out) that this was not going to be our afternoon. The disadvantage of this position is that I do not get a picture of the goalkeeper as the post is usually in the way. A view from the side would enable me to capture both, but would require gathering my equipment and making a brisk trot to the side (I am built for comfort rather than speed), and risks another player moving between the camera and the ball at the crucial moment and ending up with no shot at all.

In the programme, the write up from Skelmersdale referred to their having won something called the "Amateur FA Cup". They turned Amateur in the 1960s when they saw an opportunity to perform well in the FA Amateur Cup, with some justification, as they were runners up in 1967 and won the competition in 1971. Wearing my hat as a supporter of Dulwich Hamlet, with a rather longer amateur tradition, holding the status from their foundation until it was abolished in 1974, I can be a pedant, and point out that the Amateur FA Cup is something completely different.

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