Coming in to land

Prescot Cables' first game of pre season was at Runcorn Town, who play at the Pavilions, although there seemed to be just the one pavilion, an impressive structure.

I consulted Mr Google's maps to plan a route, about 20 minutes from the station. Looking at the Ordnance Survey map later, I realised that navigation apps identify the shortest horizontal route, but have nothing about vertical distance, something that may be of interest on foot. The recommended route was also the best in that regard, had I taken the second route on offer, I would have walked up one side of a hill and down the other. Passing a car park on the way, a group of bikers were relaxing around a trailer advertising itself as a mobile tattoo and piercing studio, but which seemed to be moonlighting by serving light refreshments in the evening.

Seeing the first evidence of a football pitch from the road, I wondered whether they would finish marking the pitch before the players had finished warming up.

I am not sure why this pitch had been abandoned, but there is a new ground behind the pavilion.

On arrival, I joined Jack Phillips and his brother Anthony (who Jack had persuaded to come along with the promise there are always loads of goals in pre season). Jack is currently training with Accrington Stanley, a well deserved opportunity, whether in the shape of a professional contract now, or keeping his name in the minds of professional clubs to keep watching him as he continues to develop.

In the meantime, there were other distractions. The ground is four or five miles from Liverpool Airport under the main easterly flight path. Having grown up three or four miles further from Gatwick, and had the famously noisy BAC 1-11 flying overhead since I was in my pram, I found it amusing when friends from not under the flight path would look up with an air of concern every five minutes as an aircraft thundered overhead. These happy times were recalled when it transpired Jack does exactly the same thing.

The main attraction of these games is to see who has returned from last season's team (non contract players are free agents until they sign registration forms) and to see if we recognise anyone trying out. For a midweek game at this time of year, we had a decent turnout, with about half the starting lineup having been with us at the end of last season.

James McCulloch

A few were trying out from the Reserves.

Sam Gifford

Also from last year's Reserves (and a couple of first team appearances), stepping up a league with the hosts, was Jack Hont.

Jack Hont

Pre season games enable us to get back into our physical routines. Even for lighter activities like photography, coordination becomes rusty when you have not done it for a few weeks. In your forties, the lens in the eye become less flexible. I am not sure whether, using a SLR camera, the eye is focusing at distance on the subject or close up on the prism on which it is projected. Either way, my eye muscles seemed to be out of practice, as I was not completely sure I was in focus for the first five minutes or so, after which everything felt normal, i.e. I could see perfectly through the viewfinder, but I did not stand a chance with the screen without taking my glasses off.

Representing the Train Crew, I was distracted by unloading operations at the chemical works next door. It was not until half time I could identify whether they had a mobile crane, or if the train was moving slowly forwards.

For the second half, I sat in the stand along one side of the pitch. The sun was out by now, with plenty of shadows cast by the stand and the trees behind it.

Joe Evans

Both teams seemed keen to play a game based on keeping possession, which meant I had more individual pictures of players than usual - the sort that have "profile picture" written all over them. Having said that, I tend to crop these pictures closely in portrait format, when I should probably be making them square.

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

Final score: Runcorn Town 2 Prescot Cables 0.

Who scored that one?

Don't you just hate it when your team scores 4 goals and you do not get a decent picture of any of them? Well, not really, 4 goals are 4 goals, especially when they are against the Yorkshirepersons, and the end result assures safety from relegation.

Last weekend's match at Prescot Cables against Wakefield took place on a typical April day, with the weather forecast, not to mention the weather, changing from hour to hour. After 2 games in sunshine, and the morning suggesting more of the same, it was well and truly raining by the time we got under way. I thought I had missed the first goal when Jonathon Bathurst found the net after 3 minutes, when I was still flapping in the breeze with my rain cover, but that was disallowed for offside.

I was better prepared for Carl Furlong going round the goalkeeper at 9 minutes, although if you click on the picture, the capture of the goalkeeper leaves something to be desired.

Carl Furlong scores Prescot's first goal

I am not sure whether the issue is focus or motion blur: Carl is in sharp focus, and the shutter speed is 1/400s. It made it into the slideshow on the "goal is a goal" principle, but I did not offer it to the Merseymart, as it would not have come out well in the unforgiving medium of print, offering an alternative picture of Carl as one of the goal scorers instead.

The next goal came from a shot from Sean Myler at 22 minutes.

Sean Myler scores Prescot's second goal

This picture has everything, Sean dispatching the ball, and the opposition player on the ground to show the defence being beaten. Everything that is, if the shot had gone straight in. It was on target, but Wakefield's Jack Fisher almost succeeded in putting it out for a corner, so when I edited the pictures, it was listed as an own goal. Unusually for this level, there is a video, by Mathew Martin. Although there are no universal rules on recording goal scorers, it is usually recorded as an own goal if it only went in the net because it was played by the defender. Standing behind the goal, I thought this was the case, but in the video, we can see the ball was going in anyway, so the record was updated to credit the goal to Sean.

I did not get anything approaching a picture of the next goal, from a Dave Dempsey corner.

Dave Dempsey. Yes, I know this is a throw in.

It was thought to have gone straight in, but it was played by Ryan Grattan and headed in by Carl Furlong. The confusion is understandable, the main question was whether the ball went over the line, as it bounced out again, and play continued for a couple of seconds before the referee gave the goal.

Whilst the Hawk-Eye system will be used in the Premier League next season for such an eventuality, we will not get it in the EvoStik League any time soon (one argument against technology is that the equipment used should be the same at all levels of the game). I wonder, however, whether there will be a trickle down effect on the rest of the game. This is only the third goal I have personally seen this season where the question has arisen whether the ball has crossed the line (that includes last week's "hole" in the net), usually that fact has been clear, with any controversy surrounding offside or a foul in the build up.

I understand Hawk-Eye is an aid to assess the path of the ball, rather than an automated indicator, so it may be several seconds before an answer emerges in the event of any question. If play has continued, the referee can then stop and give the goal. However, if he stops play, only to find analysis shows it has not crossed the line, presumably the restart will be a dropped ball on the edge of the goal area, not a goal kick or corner, as the ball had not left the field of play. I do not recall having seen such a restart live, and it sounds less than ideal: a goalmouth melee with the referee in the middle and unlikely to be able to see all infringements. So, in matches with Hawk-Eye there is likely to be a presumption in favour of continuing play. If that thinking trickles down to games where the system is not in use, we could see the benefit of any doubt shifting towards goals not being awarded where the ball has not ended up firmly in the back of the net.

The fourth goal was much clearer, with the ball ending up unequivocally in the net, courtesy of Jonathon Bathurst.

Jonathon Bathurst

I was able to get a picture of Jon, but after the ball had gone goal-ward and out of frame, so I sent in the picture above, again as a set of pictures of the goal scorers.

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

Rule no 1 - or how not to do it

I promised some tips that I follow when producing my photos, so here is the first one - make sure anything with which you are not completely satisfied never sees the light of day. If you have only taken a small number, and that leaves you with just one or two photos, that is not a problem, one photo is useful to illustrate a match report or go in the programme.

It is always easy enough with a bit of practice to take some decent photos at a football or rugby game. The sort of camera being used will affect what it is possible to do, but it is generally possible on a reasonably bright day to get a few pictures showing some action, which can then be cropped to create a good, professional looking shot.

However, one thing is even easier - to take a dud one. In a fast moving game, players or match officials will get in the way of the shot you want, the action will move more quickly than you can keep up with it, or the camera will decide to focus on something you did not want.

I shall break my rule about showing the bad shots just this once, and show a couple from Prescot Cables' pre season game against a Wrexham XI to show what I mean. Here is an extreme example, with the assistant referee getting in the way of what may have been a reasonable shot, an occupational hazard of taking photos from the sidelines:

To be fair, I do not see many of these in football photos: although its equivalent from parties and social occasions appears often enough.

This one is a bit less clear cut, and crops up more often - the sign on the terraces is in perfect focus, which cannot be said for the players.

Its place is the bin, and it needs to go there without a second thought.

That is not to say that when a picture does not turn out as intended, it is always a bad thing - for this one, I was trying to catch the goalkeeper, but I like the effect with the focus on Wrexham's No 4.

The pictures that made it into the final selection from the Prescot v Wrexham game can be seen here.