Gylfi and the fish

A few weeks ago, before he left to take up his new job in Slovakia, my friend Matt from the Lost Boyos was entertaining his Twitter followers recounting incidents where he alarmed people like ticket inspectors, when, intending to show a mobile phone ticket, instead showed his wallpaper, depicting his favourite professional player, Gylfi Sigurðsson, holding a fish. I avoided this problem on my way to Prescot Cables' game at Scarborough Athletic, firstly by having an arty picture of a leaf as my wallpaper, and secondly by buying a paper ticket. The conductor added a smiley face, presumably in amusement at the concept of paying a walk up fare and having to wait to see who has not turned up for their cheaper reserved seats before you can sit down.

Yorkshire is historically a centre of the wool industry, and on changing trains and buying an onward ticket in Leeds (saving money on a straight through fare), someone seemed to be making use of the local product to keep their boat warm.

Coming in to Scarborough, and going back out again on the train to Bridlington, I looked out for progress on the club's new ground at Weaponness. Unfortunately I did not see anything, mainly because it was a long time since I looked at the map, and I was therefore looking out of the wrong side of the train.

On arrival in Bridlington, there was a little light rain. We were playing towards the coast end, which was handy, as there is covered standing, whereas the other end is open, and the sides offer the choice of seats or bus shelter like cover behind the dugouts.

Phil Bannister

We had a significantly changed team from the last few games, with a number of players injured or unavailable. We have seen in the first few games that we have strength in depth, and a squad used to playing alongside each other in a number of different combinations. That does not necessarily give an advantage when we have to make five or six changes. The hosts opened the scoring early with a goal after four minutes, but we were able to keep them at bay after that, with pressure of our own.

Lloyd Dean beats the keeper, but his header was cleared off the line

For the second half I positioned myself to the side, near the hosts' goal. This has the disadvantage that the assistant referee can get in the way. Sometimes that gives a chance for the arty back of the head shot.

Scarborough upped their game in the second half, as ours seemed to fall apart, with their securing two more goals.

Because of the respective positions in which they play, I rarely catch both of the Nicholson brothers in the same frame.

Josh and Joe Nicholson

On this occasion Joe scored a consolation goal two minutes from normal time.

He was cancelled out in injury time by an old friend of these pages (in the sense of always being good for a photo, not so much in the sense of always scoring against us), David Brown, who took full advantage of a defensive error to head home an easy goal.

Jack Phillips with David Brown

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

Final score: Scarborough Athletic 4 Prescot Cables 1 (Joe Nicholson)