First down and five

My friend Christian writes about the Washington Redskins for the Uncle Sam Sports blog, for UK based fans of American sports. I have to admit the stuff about the defensive lineman for the county intercepting the quarterback slipping the pigskin to the wide receiver (or something like that) goes a bit over my head. Also, as I identify players by haircuts, I do not easily adjust to helmets, although I find nothing of which to complain in the numbers on the front of the shirts (you know they make sense). Nonetheless, I always read his pieces as I know there will be a couple of superb turns of phrase in there.

The site maintains the American work ethic - a request for a week off was met with the response, "Christian, if you had a bye week after every Redskins loss, you'd never blog again", a point I considered after Prescot Cables' defeat at home to Mossley, something of a bogey team for us. I think I heard someone say that in 17 games against them, we have won twice.

The day started well, with my being let loose with the incense for a couple of parts of the Liverpool Cathedral Walsingham Festival. Forget smoke bombs, this is the real thing. It was to be a full day, finishing with an evening meal at the Crown of India for Dr Phil's birthday. At the away fixture corresponding to his 30th birthday last season, we recorded a rare win against today's opposition.

Lloyd Dean & James Edgar

The day was on the awkward side of bright, with Mossley playing in white to add extra glare.

That is not without benefit later, as it shaves a few minutes off my processing time. There are more bytes in a pixel of black (expressed in RGB - red, green blue - as 255,255,255) than white (0,0,0). Also, on a bright picture, there are usually solid blocks of colour, using less data, whereas a dark one often has pixels of grain interrupting any blocks. 6000 x 4000 pixel raw files from this game were about 17-18MB, against 20MB on a gloomy afternoon, and 24-25MB in the evening. On my computer, that adds a few seconds of waiting for an image to load or process, which adds up over 120 or so images.

The light also produced a good set of images for commercial use, of play in front of the advertising. If I were on the wing, I would be tempted to negotiate individual endorsements.

Bram Johnstone

The report on the visitors' website states that we started confidently, which is probably not untrue. It also refers to their more controlled approach, a fair assessment, our problem after a few minutes being that, whilst we were not without some individual quality, we were unable to put anything together as a team.

The visitors were 2-0 ahead at half time, which should not have been irretrievable, so we tried for a change with two substitutions, including bringing on new signing from Burnley, Josh Dolling, who featured in midweek against Kendal Town, but this time we were able to see him.

Josh Dolling

All this was to no avail, as the visitors scored quickly after half time, and managed two more to make their day complete.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 0 Mossley 5.