That's more like it

Following Prescot Cables' poor performance on the road at Ossett Albion, we were not sure what to expect entertaining Trafford, who were in third place. Spectators seemed not to be deterred, as we attracted a crowd of 249 on what had threatened to be a wet night, although the rain left off in time for the game. It has been the case for some years that our position in the attendance table is better than that on the field, and this season has been no exception, as we are in sixth in home attendances.

With Lloyd Dean serving a delayed part of a suspension, Dominic Reid and Harry Cain started. The most surprising change saw James Edgar and Chris Almond, who we expect to be be further forward, in the full back positions. Garry Williams told me after the game that this had been something of a gamble. We would soon see if it paid off.

James Edgar

Chris Almond

Dr James and I made our way round to the Gasworks Side. A noisy crowd had gathered behind the visitors' goal, and had fixed their attention on their goalkeeper.

Dominic Marie takes a shot

Plenty thought he should have been relieved from them after 20 minutes, when he brought down the advancing Dominic Reid to concede a penalty, in circumstances many thought was a goal scoring opportunity. The video of the penalty, taken by Dale Wright, can be seen here, and we can hear that confusion between 6 and 8 on our shirts affects our people too. Some people have wondered why there has been a spate of tweets at away games crediting action to "Unknown Player". This comes from the Pitchero video app, which, as well as showing clips, also generates tweets. It happens when the camera operator has uploaded the action without identifying the player. We do not have many on our own feed, which shows how well Glyn has got to grips with the system.

The changes looked to be paying off, with a much better attacking performance.

James Doyle

We had a scare when Marcus Burgess did not spot that one of our players had played the ball that was rolling towards him - I thought as soon as it was played that he was going to pick it up - conceding an indirect free kick 8 yards out. Strength in numbers dealt with the threat.

Our second goal came a few minutes into the second half from Dominic Reid. I do not need to dredge my memory to describe a goal I did not catch, as I can direct readers to the video. Once again I caught the celebrations.

Dominic Reid

We had the better of the half, with noteworthy performances (at least from my side of the pitch) from Dominic Reid earning his Rogues & Rascals Barbershop Man of the Match award, and Harry Cain making a claim for a continued starting place.

Harry Cain

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 2 (Wright pen, Reid) Trafford 0.

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb

On the weekend of Prescot Cables' visit to Ossett Albion, Wakefield was holding its annual rhubarb festival. I am not sure whether Ossett is in the rhubarb triangle, where they grow forced rhubarb in darkened sheds, a sort of living dead of the vegetable world (the result is fruitier that way). I was unable to participate, as other commitments meant I took a late train. My bus from Dewsbury called itself Max, and offered e-leather seats and "Grand Yorkshire Connections". All that was missing was an advertisement for the local chewing delicacy, Ee Ba Gum. King George V once explained the secret of handling the physical demands of his duties, "Take every chance to take the weight off your feet, and never pass up the opportunity to relieve yourself". Today one might add never decline free electricity, and charging sockets were available.

On arrival at the ground, I procured another local delicacy from the tea bar, hot pork pie with gravy. There was a good turnout from the visiting supporters: in addition to those who had made their own arrangements, the team coach was full, with some intending travellers having to be turned away.

Speaking to the Liverpool Echo during the week, Brian Richardson had warned against complacency after our convincing win against today's hosts a couple of weeks ago, as they would be looking to restore their advantage. The programme said, providing statistical evidence, that they do not enjoy a good record against us, which came as a surprise, as I always thought of it as a difficult place from which to come away with anything. Perhaps I have just been to the wrong games.

I am not sure that complacency was the cause of our performance, which had me pondering going to see if there was any of that rhubarb left. It was undoubtedly poor, with even our most reliable performers having a bad day at the office. We were not helped by the referee, who was ever alert for offside...

Dominic Marie

... but less observant of minor fouls.

Jordan Wynne

The day was more successful photographically, with the sun breaking through the light cloud.

James McCulloch

With the balance of play as it had been in the first half, I stayed at the same end for the start of the second to get some closer shots of our defence.

Ben Cartwright

We had some more forward movement with some fresh legs, with Dominic Reid, Harry Cain and Andy Scarisbrick looking to stake a claim for a start.

Andy Scarisbrick

However, the coordination was still not there, and we succumbed to a deserved defeat. There was, however, a photographic good point, as, unlike the forced rhubarb, we enjoyed natural light throughout, this being the first day of the year we had not needed floodlights. With sunset at 5.20, the last few minutes of the game fell squarely within the golden hour.

Dominic Reid

Leaving the ground, I am always surprised to find the gate leads onto the cricket club's outfield, so I am not sure if they have a local rule when the seasons overlap regarding a departing football spectator stopping a ball reaching the boundary. From the position of the coach and the tyre tracks, I think the outfield may not just be used for foot traffic.

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

Final score: Ossett Albion 3 Prescot Cables 0

Goal celebrations

Astute readers may have noticed that my collections have included a few goal celebrations recently. The management are decorating the home dressing room with action photos, and wanted celebrations too. I tend to stop once a goal has gone in, to join in the applause, and to view the pictures, so I have been training myself to keep snapping. At least I am not doing the video: Glyn, our camera operator, explained to me that the Pitchero software captures the 20 seconds immediately before he identifies the scorer and upload, giving realistically about 7 or 8 seconds to initiate the process. For Prescot Cables' game at home to Colne, I took my new approach one step further by missing all the goals and capturing all the celebrations.

The weather forecast gave us some concern, with an overnight temperature of -2ºC. The ground is often a degree or two colder than the rest of the town, and an overcast sky would mean a frozen pitch would not thaw. As it was, the temperature was nowhere near as low as expected, so there was no issue.

The cloud meant we had the floodlights on from the beginning. However, it was light enough for me to spend all my time behind the goal, rather than resort to the Gasworks Side, so I was able to get the advertising in the background for the sponsors.

Ben Cartwright

Team captain James McCulloch was injured, so joined the management on the bench, and modelled one of our new hats, which sold out on their first day on sale. These pages are of the #NoFlatCapNoParty persuasion, but they do look very smart.

The Management (and Andy)

We had a couple of missed chances in the opening few minutes, which we thought we might regret later against the team with the best away record in the league, especially when the visitors opened the scoring with a shot almost from the touchline after a quarter of an hour.

The visitors had the best of the game in the first half. but things looked up in the second. Dominic Marie got to an attempted clearance to open our account.

Dominic Marie celebrates his goal

The visitors restored their advantage a few minutes later, almost immediately cancelled out when Lloyd Dean headed home a cross. The visitors may have had cause to be aggrieved, as it looked as though the ball went out of play in the run up, but the linesman was closer than us and did not flag.

Dominic Marie congratulates Lloyd Dean

We secured the points fifteen minutes from time when Chris Almond looked to have accidentally deflected a shot away from goal, but had put it just inside the post.

Celebrating the third goal - Chris Almond is in there somewhere

After a good team performance, the Rogues and Rascals Barbershop Man of the Match award went to James Edgar, whose consistently good play was once again rewarded. This time I remembered to place the advertising board a bit higher so we do not give the player a haircut in cropping the picture for the website.

Club Secretary Howard Nulty presents James Edgar with his award

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 3 (Marie, Dean, Almond) Colne 2

Eek, more Fish

I was once talking to a Lady Mayoress of Liverpool, who grew up in Dublin. She regaled me with the tale of a summer in the Connemara Gaeltacht, a school prize for her Irish language skills. She had enjoyed it, but there was a downside - "It was fish for breakfast, fish for dinner, fish for tea - by the end when the boats went out I was praying they would not catch anything." I feared we might have a similar weariness with Fish, when we heard Michael of that name, having scored four goals against us for Mossley before Christmas, had signed for our hosts, Brighouse Town.

I thought on the way that, had I known what the weather would be like, I would have set out earlier to enjoy walking in the Calder Valley. As it was, we needed to wait to find out how much rain there had been overnight. When the hosts started tweeting the playlist for music on the tannoy, I assumed there had been no need for a pitch inspection. I had some time in Halifax before catching the bus, so I went to the Minster and purchased a photography permit.

Discussing the weekly player movements at Halifax Minster

Arriving at the ground, I made a dead heat with my friend Roger, who first recruited me to the Cables interest, and his partner Angela, who had driven up from Hampshire for this game and for London Broncos' fixture at Swinton Lions the following day. Also watching were new local residents Stephen and Jill, the owners of Ged the Giraffe, an inflatable familiar to those who saw Dulwich Hamlet's championship winning season in 2012-3 .

For my pre match pie, I could have taken a metal fork, but I thought I might wander off and have to keep hold of it until half time, so opted for plastic. Not that everyone was as considerate: I spotted a home official fishing metal cutlery out of a bin where someone had dumped it in the same way as they would plastic items.

It was a bright, sunny day, and we were playing with the sun behind us, which was not without its challenges ...

Joe Herbert

although I was happy with some arty effects.

Ronnie watches the action

I managed some decent shots of Marcus Burgess in action without anyone in the way, which is not always possible.

Marcus Burgess

I remember Roger telling me that he visited a number of clubs when he first came to Liverpool, and returned to Prescot after winning the raffle on his first visit. He won on his first visit to Brighouse too.

My gold standard for a vegetable raffle is from Seaford Town (at home to East Grinstead Town in about 2004): a large basket, with the centrepiece of an enormous cauliflower. This one lacked the cauliflower, but was beating the vegetable shortage and the plastic bag charge, requiring six free carrier bags to take it away.

The shadows were lengthening by the second half.

James Edgar

The game had been evenly balanced until Valter Fernandes was controversially dismissed on the hour. You can see the video here: I have watched it a few times and eventually worked out why the referee reacted to a rather aimless swing of the arm, although he was shielded by the players from seeing the elbow that provoked it.

Valter Fernandes

As we had feared, Michael Fish made the most of the opportunity by scoring twice in ten minutes.

I do not think Brian Richardson likes making substitutions for the sake of it, and had made none until after 80 minutes. However, we needed to try to salvage something, so he then used all three at once. This brought an almost immediate benefit from Dominic Reid to our goal difference and goals scored.

Dominic Reid

After the game, I joined Roger going to Bradford, where I was entrusted with the Good Beer Guide and Mr Google's maps. We started with the excellent Corn Dolly, then Jacob's Beer House were encouraging popular devotion to St Blaise, the patron saint of wool combers, whose feast had been the previous day, by offering an eponymous Armenian style ale (I am not sure what was distinctively Armenian about it) from Salamander. To cap the weekend of catching up with friends, on my way through Manchester to the Swinton game, I caught up briefly with Matt from the Lost Boyos before he flew home from his own weekend sporting tour.

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

Final score: Brighouse Town 2 Prescot Cables 1 (Reid)

Hopping into the sunset

From what I could gather, before Prescot Cables scheduled game against Lancaster City at the weekend, an early pitch inspection found standing water, with the referee allowing the volunteers time to see if they could get it to drain. Unfortunately, whilst they were successful, like Noah found when the ark came to rest, only the surface of the ground was dry, and the pitch was too soft to play. A delay in the referee arriving for the second inspection meant that we only knew at 12.45, which would have left the visitors tight for time if the game had gone ahead.

A game off means an opportunity to hop, but the rain and the time meant other options were limited. Marine were at home to Stafford Rangers, which I could not describe as a hop, as I must have been there getting on for 50 times over the years. Their sandy bedrock and well drained topsoil meant it was one of the few local games to survive, and no inspection was required.

To find the best combination of buses to the ground I tried the new version of the Arriva Bus app, to find that the journey planner still needs some work. The first attempt, starting at "current location" told me the journey was not possible (it is, by about five combinations) and the second, starting at my nearest stop, suggested going half way to town, crossing the road and taking two buses to 50 yards from where I started. Traveline, fortunately, proved more helpful.

The visitors were playing in orange - there was a time when it was a good colour for an away strip as it did not clash with anything, and the league thought along similar lines when they chose the colour for the substitutes' bibs.

The shorts and socks were more unusual. Undershorts are supposed to match shorts, but I am not sure if they are available in grey, so common sense probably prevailed in allowing black.

The visitors' goal was under pressure from the start.

I did not capture it, but Marine scored what turned out to be the only goal after five minutes.

The clouds cleared as the game progressed, with the coastal sunshine allowing for excellent shutter speeds even at the opposite end of the pitch.

1/1600s f/6.3 ISO400 300mm

Half time presented the opportunity to be arty.

The sun was now low in the sky, and, having had the full advantage of its being behind me in the first half, I was now looking directly into it.

Having checked the time of sunset, I knew the sun would drop behind the houses in Crosender Road after about ten minutes.

Two substitutes would be familiar to Prescot Cables supporters. Sean Myler has been with the club for some time ...

... and Michael Grogan (of the 95th minute equaliser in the Liverpool Senior Cup semi final at Tranmere Rovers in 2012) had been mentioned in that morning's transfer list.

With the assistance of the floodlights, I was able to maintain fast shutter speeds to the end, at least when the action was immediately in front of me.

1/500s f/4.8 ISO3200 135mm

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

Final score: Marine 1 Stafford Rangers 0