Sunshine after rain

A couple of weeks' steady rain meant Prescot Cables' game at home to Ramsbottom United was our first competitive fixture since Scarborough at the end of January. Skemersdale United have not been able to play on the pitch either, and it looked as though it had benefited from three weeks' rest and from the grass starting to grow again.

As well as the pitch having had chance to dry, I anticipated being dry too, as no rain was forecast. There was even sun, which at this time of the year means it is tricky to sit behind the goal line at the Safari Park End. The light is mainly from the side for pictures, but the sun is low enough to dazzle, and bright enough that I cannot see the camera screen. I therefore sat in the shade of the side perimeter. An issue I did not have a couple of years ago is boards on the Gasworks Side giving a strong backlight - a product of our success selling advertising. The D5300's sports mode automatically uses matrix metering,  so I experimented with shutter priority and spot and weighted metering. The latter had some advantages, although I am not sure it outweighed the disadvantage of having to manually adjust shutter speed as play went into the shade.

Reece Fishwick

We quickly imposed ourselves when Reece Fishwick was brought down for a penalty converted by Chris Almond.

One of  the more ominous sights in a game is a player going down with no-one near him, and this proved to be the case when Josef Faux landed awkwardly after jumping for the ball, injuring his knee. Sadly, early reports suggest he may be out for some time.

Josef Faux

The resulting substitution meant James Edgar returned from injury somewhat earlier than he expected.

James Edgar

A lot of sports photography involves techniques you can learn - looking at published photographs to see what works, mastering camera settings, cropping and lighting. However, there is something, that we can call 1/10s (probably less than that) that separates professionals from those of us in the amateur field. It is the difference in reaction time between getting the fingers making contact with the ball and getting it a foot away flying off to safety.

Ben Barnes

It is also the difference between getting the ball on the head of the player and ... well you see the pattern.

Chris Almond heads for his second goal ...

... joins Ernie in watching it go in ...

... and celebrates.

To access the pitch for the second half, I used the smart new gate installed by our sponsors Joseph's Joinery - the only snag being that with a bolt at the bottom as well as the top, I need someone to close it behind me. The cover at the Eaton Street end gave me some shadow to work in. Ben Barnes was sensibly wearing a cap, but I do not recall ever having seen a linesman wearing one, even though in this case he was looking straight into the sun for most of the 45 minutes.

The linesman watches Reece McNally

We had taken the opportunity presented by the weather to play friendlies against Southport and Chorley, and made a new signing, Junior Dos Santos, who has played with West Ham's youth setup and recently relocated to the north. Some tweets telling us he was enjoying training and looking forward to playing for the club went a long way to ensuring an enthusiastic welcome when he came on.

Junior Dos Santos

The visitors' goal came when Ben Barnes made one of those howlers that keep goalkeepers awake at night - an innocuous free kick came in his direction, he had the options of gathering it in his hands, stopping it with his feet or falling on it. A moment's hesitation meant he did none, and the ball trickled into the net. It is the goalkeeper's lot that talk after the game was of whether I had a picture of the miss rather than one of the acrobatic save I have published above.

For the last quarter of an hour, the shadow of the stand was long enough to let me take position by the side of the pitch.

Matthew Hamilton

We were joined for the afternoon by some friends from Larvik, Norway, the home town of the father and son Norwegian internationals Gunnar and Hallvar Thoresen. The Thoresens made their names with Larvik Turn, whereas our visitors support the town's older football team but younger sports club, IF Fram. They have sponsored some shirt numbers in the name of the town for a couple of seasons, and were making their first visit to Prescot.

Bjørn Nilsson from Larvik presents Baba Conteh with his Man of the Match 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 2 (Almond 2 (1 pen)) Ramsbottom United 1.

The right stop

I have been to Ossett on so many occasions, I can now travel on autopilot. I can even afford to be vague as to which club we are playing: if I find our coach parked outside Ossett Town, opposite the bus station, it is time to get off, whereas if it is not, I need to stay on for a couple more stops to Albion.

I had seen the team sheet online, and a few of us were surprised Lloyd Dean was on the bench. However, we have just assembled not just a team that plays well together, but a squad can do so in a surprising number of permutations, allowing us to take full advantage to rotate players. Unusually for this level, this also applies in goal, with Ben Barnes having performed well whilst Marcus Burgess was injured, and Marcus was able to return whilst Ben was on holiday.

Marcus Burgess

I have remarked before on the microclimate affecting Ingfield, being a couple of degrees colder than the town. Our video analyst Josh remarked that it was a bit cold, but he says that in places I think have been positively balmy for the time of year. I have noticed since working pitchside, that the perimeter fence often provides a convenient windbreak, an advantage he does not have, being often above the protection even of the ground perimeter.

I was not keen on the width (or lack of it) of the run off behind the goal, so I took up position by the side of the pitch. The ground has a slight slope, and falls away sharply behind one end, so you get plenty of shots against the sky. Add that this was the earliest sunset of the year for us (it had been getting later for a week, but we were further east than the previous week), throw in a sky that political journalist and Dulwich Hamlet supporter Conor Pope once described as "England Euro 96 away shirt grey", and there were some good contrasts.

James Edgar

I was only just settled in my place when James Edgar opened the scoring. I had better luck capturing the shot when Josh Klein-Davies added a second.

Josh Klein-Davies lines up his shot

Chris Almond ensured we had a healthy three goal lead at half time.

Chris Almond

At half time I did a quick photoshoot for Josh, who wanted a picture for the cover of his university coursework. With people doing things like working a camera, it is considerably easier to take a picture of them pretending to do so in a controlled situation rather than trying to catch them doing so in the wild.

For the second half, I went to the bottom of the hill, and found a similar issue with the width of the run off, so I settled for the side again. I was barely in position before James Edgar opened the scoring for the half. More or less my first shot was the celebration.

I had operated for most of the first half on shutter priority, as the sports mode was giving me too slow a speed, and left the metering in spot mode from the previous game. For this half the floodlights came fully into play, so I tried centre weighted, before settling on matrix (which is also used by the sports mode). The lights at Ossett are quite bright and white so it worked quite well.

Reece Fishwick

Our fifth goal came directly from a free kick from the touchline by Josh Klein Davies, with Chris Almond completing a repeat of the scoring pattern from the first half.

A late substitution also saw Tunde Owolabi return to the team, after short spells at Hyde United and Glossop North End.

Tunde Owolabi

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

Final score: Ossett Town 0 Prescot Cables 6 (Edgar 2, Klein-Davies 2, Almond 2)

The colour of the shirt

Hyde United's supporters' coach to Prescot Cables had just dropped off its passengers as I arrived for our game. I was sporting my pink and blue striped rugby-style shirt - as I never get to London to watch Dulwich Hamlet these days, I have to get wear out of it somehow. To be fair, I should not wear it with my waxed jacket, the colours clash horribly. Two gentlemen in the queue took issue with my clothing choices, commenting that a man needs to be brave to wear pink. With some people around, you need to be brave to leave space between the ground and your knuckles, but we will let that pass.

The weather had been wet for a few days, with most of the matches in the area being postponed, and our VertiDraining again paying off, as we survived. The inspection is concerned with the bit the players use - the bit I use, where the substitutes warm up, was decidedly squishy.

A couple of visitors were familiar to us. Dominic Marie, who left us for Marine in October, was now settled at Hyde. I did not capture a very good shot of his return, as he was on the bench, and we were into the territory of pot luck catching specific players by the time he came on. David Brown has been popping up all over Yorkshire, usually scoring against us, for as long as I have been writing, and has now found his way to Cheshire (we observe traditional, and County FA, boundaries on these pages).

David Brown

After the last game, where the goal celebrations pictures featured those frequenting the Fence End, one of the Dugout Irregulars light heartedly expressed a little jealousy that they did not seem to feature, so I made sure I got them in.

The Dugout Irregulars watch Reece McNally

We enjoyed a competitive first half, with a couple of good chances, but without a goal. The match report from the visitors provided a fair record.

Harry Cain

A couple of minutes into the second half Lloyd Dean opened the scoring. I was in a good position to capture it.

Lloyd Dean shoots for goal

The League website has the next two scores in the wrong order, as it suggests Thomas Pratt levelled for the visitors before we went ahead again. However, we went two ahead with a goal from Jordan Wynne. I was on the side by this time, and caught the celebration.

As this was the earliest sunset of the year for a home game, I experimented with spot metering, which seemed to give reasonable results.

Baba Conteh

After our second goal, Hyde made some changes, including bringing off our traditional nemesis, David Brown, and replacing him with Dominic Marie.

Ben Barnes denies Dominic Marie

The almost inevitable happened when Dominic brought the visitors level with 15 minutes to go. We defended well for the remaining time to ensure we kept hold of a point.

After the game, I was speaking to Louis Coyne's father, who I had not realised played for Cables under Joe Gibiliru when I started watching in the 1990s. We agreed on the difficulty of getting a good picture of centre backs, as they can have a good game without getting much of the ball if they are closing down the opposition's ability to play, and there are often other players blocking the view anyway. As it happened I had a bit more luck with that than usual in this game.

Louis Coyne lines up a free kick

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 (Dean, Wynne) Hyde United 2.

Millennial

In the Liverpool Senior Cup, if a tie is postponed twice, the club drawn away has the option to play the game at their ground, and for our first round tie against Bootle, we exercised it.

The week before the game saw our Chairman, Tony Zeverona, announce his resignation after twelve years in the post. Tony took the helm when we became supporter owned after our former owner withdrew his support in 2005, and has guided us through a fair few difficult moments since then. The job involves a lot of work most people do not see, often missing a fair bit of the football, and not many people want to do it for ever. This is probably a good time to look for a successor, with the results of many years' work bearing fruit in the league, better attendances than for many years, and some silverware. Tony's resignation also came just after he achieved national fame in the pages of When Saturday Comes magazine, illustrated by a rather decent photo, even if I say so myself.

I found dealing with WSC most straightforward, they asked to use the picture (and some well known publications do not), offered a fee and paid it with commendable efficiency.

Turning to the game, although I was standing next to Ben Barnes (I say "next to", it was more in his shadow) when he confirmed that he was not cup tied, I am not sure he had enough appearances to be eligible. Reserve team keeper Jack Morton therefore became our eighth first team keeper of the season.

Jack Morton

We have not had many evening games this season, so I have not had much opportunity to experiment with settings. At the moment I am using centre weighted metering, getting more consistent results than matrix metering. I have gone back to processing the raw files manually, lowering the black until it almost loses definition, which works well for the sky.

Josef Faux returns from injury

As there was no rain, I took the filter off the lens. However, the first divot flying in my direction reminded me water is not the only thing I would rather be cleaning off a filter, so I rapidly replaced it.

Jordan Southworth opened the scoring after ten minutes.

Joe Herbert congratulates Jordan Southworth

I swapped sides half way through - I had been reluctant to do this as it means sitting behind the assistant referee, but there is more than enough run off by the side of the pitch to mean I am not impeding his progress.

Valter Fernandes

The visitors were depleted by injuries, but put up a good performance, and would have been disappointed not to have levelled the scores before half time.

Five minutes into the second half, Jordan Wynne increased our lead.

Baba Conteh congratulates Jordan Wynne

Lloyd Dean was next to score ...

Lloyd Dean

... followed by a second from Jordan Wynne a few minutes later.

Fixtures like this are a good opportunity to introduce players coming through from the Youth team, and we saw debuts from Matthew Kewn and Dominic Murphy. Capturing players, particularly substitutes, at evening games has an element of luck, and I did not capture Matthew. However, in the 90th minute, Joe Herbert had a shot saved, for the rebound to fall to Dominic, who did not err in putting it away.

Dominic Murphy (15) shoots for goal

When I published the photos, I acquired a new follower on Twitter. The 00 on the end of Dominic's handle tells me this was our first goal scored by someone born in 2000. It is enough to make you feel old.

Despite the score, this was not a classic performance. The Man of the Match award went to Jordan Wynne, who, in an illustration of the quest for quality in the team, felt he had not had a good performance, despite his two goals.

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 5 (Southworth, Wynne 2, Dean, Murphy) Bootle 0