Making it safe

There is something to be said for enjoying the last week of the season without worrying about results. Occasions like avoiding relegation at Lincoln United in the last game of the 2007-8 season are not good for us if they come around too often.

Prescot Cables approached our penultimate home game of the season against Burscough knowing events off the field had probably ensured our safety. Since our game at Wakefield, the League had accepted the resignations of Wakefield, dropping one step due to ground issues, and Cammell Laird, dropping two steps due to ownership issues. That should fill the two places, but there was a rumour that the club finishing bottom would be relegated, presumably making three clubs if Wakefield were not in that position. Results last week made us safe from that, with our win at Wakefield and Ossett Albion's loss at home meaning only those clubs could finish in the bottom position. It is still better to secure safety by finishing out of the last two places, and we needed points to make that sure.

Max Pouncey

Outside football, I look after the servers in a traditional High Church parish, so Holy Saturday (not Easter Saturday, that is the Saturday after Easter) is a busy day, helping put everything back into church that we took out on Good Friday, in time for the Vigil service in the evening. Away games are out of the question, so I was quite fortunate that, for the fourth time in five years, we were playing at home.

Burscough's green kit is one of those to which the camera never seems to do justice, certainly not in daylight, reproduction under floodlights seems better, but it is a more vivid shade than appears here.

Richie Mottram

This is a day where my primary weather concern is not the light, but the absence of wind and rain in the evening - back at church we have a candle to light, from a wood fire, outdoors, in the encircling gloom. However, for the record, there was a decent amount of sun, which presented the usual challenges with backlighting from the white parts of the perimeter fences at the Safari Park End.

Antony Shinks

For some reason, the Fire Service used the Hope Street end to park an appliance for most of the second half. I am not sure why, there did not seem to be any flames, no water needing to be pumped out, and not even any trees from which a cat may need to be rescued.

The visiting goalkeeper was once again Tim Horn, who had been vociferous in our meeting in the Liverpool Senior Cup back in November, especially in the penalty shootout, where he successfully encouraged our penalty takers to aim the ball in his direction, with Isaac Kusoloka being one such. What goes around comes around, and our guest has lost none of his willingness to come off his line, which brought Isaac the opportunity to score his second goal.

Isaac Kusoloka dispossesses Tim Horn near the changing rooms...

... and puts the ball in the goal

The third goal came from Luke Robinson, putting away a loose ball at close range. I got some sort of picture, but even with the "goal is a goal" principle, I include enough of the player for him to be identifiable, just from the knees down is not enough to make it into the collection.

Luke Robinson

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

Final score: Prescot Cables 3 (Kusoloka 2, Robinson), Burscough 0

At least it's proper Yorkshire

Thus said our Church Treasurer, a Yorkshireperson, when I said I had been at Harrogate Railway Athletic the previous day. I am not sure what he counted as proper Yorkshire: he disdained places such as Halifax (we do that too), but he cannot have been casting aspersions on the whole West Riding, as Harrogate is in it - parts of the West Riding ended up in North, West, South and East Yorkshire for local government purposes.

The small but select group of independently travelling supporters took our pre match refreshment in the Montpellier Quarter of Harrogate. This hosted a number of establishments advertising themselves as a brasserie, which I thought is what they call a cash machine in Yorkshire. The first establishment we visited has a sporting link, Hales Bar having featured in Chariots of Fire. The bar has working gas jet cigar lighters, although they now just contribute to the heating, as it would be illegal to light a cigar, even to take outside before puffing away, as possession of lit tobacco comes within the definition of smoking for the smoke free legislation.

This being Lent, and my having given up meat for the duration, the selection at the tea bar can be somewhat limited - no horsey tastiness of a pie or burger for me. However, these days you more or less make up your own Lent regulations: I just avoid anything that is identifiably meat, so gravy on my chips was still in. Back when Lent regulations were more rigid, one odd exception in Germany was that beaver tails could be eaten, as they looked like fish. I am not sure whether Harrogate was ever well populated by beavers (Beverley in the East Riding derives its name from the semi aquatic rodents), but they seem to have found their way on to the club crest, and as the mascot.

I have mentioned in previous posts how sometimes we need to use the background to adjust the picture to get it straight. In this picture of Liam Hollett taking a header, we might look at the crossbar and think it is a candidate for adjustment.

It was: on the camera, there was not enough of a slope. Harrogate competes with Clitheroe for the steepest side to side slope in the division. The crossbar is 8' above the ground along its length, so sloping ground correctly means a sloping crossbar. We can just about see the breeze block wall in the background, which will usually be level (in the case of Leatherhead a bit too level). To get the angle right, I started with a wider crop, so I could line up against the houses behind the ground.

When we visited Harrogate last season, they were building a new clubhouse adjacent to both the main and training pitches, financed by selling their old clubhouse for development as a nursing home. As well as providing excellent facilities, the new developments have an unexpected bonus for the photographer, as they provide handy walls, windows and drainpipes against which to align a shot, at the end where it used to be quite difficult to get the angle right. Take this shot of Carl Furlong.

Having used the buildings, they have served our purpose, so we can crop them out.

Unusually, I had something to send to the Merseymart for each of Prescot's goals, although in each case the final shot before the goal went in did not capture the image I wanted. For the second goal from Jon Bathurst, it looks as though the defender is about to get the ball.

Although I correctly captioned this as goal no 2 on the slide show, I thought this one from a second or so before, showing Jon leaving the defenders in disarray, would be the better image for the paper, and it was indeed the one they used.

Similarly, I captured Sean Myler's debut goal for Prescot's third.

However, a shot of the featured player's back does not really work, so I again used one from a second before, not quite such clear action, but at least we can see the player's face.

Finally, Liam Dawson's first goal was scored from a few yards away from this picture, but it was close enough to go in with the caption "Liam Dawson avoids his marker for Prescot's first goal".

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

Turned out fine in the end

This weekend saw Prescot Cables' last game of the season at home to Curzon Ashton. A couple of weeks ago, we were a bit concerned about this game, possibly needing points to avoid relegation, against a Curzon side needing a win to clinch automatic promotion.

That was then: a win at Ossett Town and a point against their tenants Wakefield in midweek pulled us free from the bottom two places; relegation positions were likely to be allocated off the field; and Curzon were assured of second place, so were resting some players for the play off semi final a couple of days later. The last was a sensible precaution, as they needed extra time and penalties to overcome Garforth Town and secure their place in the final.

The result was a win for Prescot, meaning an average tally of exactly one point per game and a 16th place finish, which came as a surprise, not least to me, as I was confident that we could not finish higher than 17th. It was a good finish, with all the changes in the team management over the year, and the first time for at least 5 years that the club has finished in a higher league position than the previous season.

After the game came the end of season presentation, with Joe Gibiliru Jnr winning a clean sweep of Supporters', Players' and Injury Assessor's Player of the Year awards. The last of those is more traditionally the Manager's award, but with one manager having left the country with his day job, and another taking Warrington Town to the Football League, the choice was made by the Injury Assessor, Tony Carroll, who has been a stabilising influence on the bench.

Joe Gibiliru Jnr

All the players deserve credit for the season's performance, those who have been with us all the way through, and those who have played a small number of games. When we are not able to compensate players for money lost through taking time off work, or when other pressures call for them to be elsewhere, we will necessarily have to field a lot of players in a season. As an illustration, here are our most regular player of the season, John Couch, with 35 starts and 5 substitute appearances, and our newest player, Luke Edwards, making his first appearance on the pitch away to Skelmersdale a couple of weeks ago.

John Couch

Luke Edwards

I think the handling of the move to amateur status helped to retain players, and still make the club attractive for new players. There was no saga of unpaid wages for weeks on end: amounts due were paid on time, and players who wanted to move on were able to do so without fuss. Indeed, only a couple of players with longer travelling distances chose to do so.

Of course, the game would not be complete without the supporters. Stalwart Cables supporter Harry Thomas is often telling me he should appear in more pictures, so here he is chatting to substitute goalkeeper Brian Pilkington.

From the look on Brian's face, and the careful look in the direction of the goal, I think Harry may have just told him of the time he was keeping goal, under the rather less well constructed posts of yesteryear, and the crossbar fell on his head.

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

All over bar the shouting ... or maybe not

The dust is starting to settle on the issues of promotion and relegation in the EvoStik League Division 1 North. The championship goes to AFC Fylde with a couple of games to spare, so unless we meet them in a cup, the plan to take a trip to Lytham and its Good Beer Guide pubs and use Fylde's free bus to get to the game will not be put into action.

The breezy Kellamergh Park, home of AFC Fylde

Relegation issues may have been determined off the field. The League have determined that Woodley Sports will be relegated, due to ground grading and security of tenure issues. That means only one remaining relegation place, occupied by Cammell Laird, too far behind on points to escape. Woodley can appeal to the FA, and I am convinced that the committees that decide these things have chicken for lunch, to consult the entrails for their meeting, so it is worth making sure to resolve the issue on points.

Keeping warm at Durham

There was also news on Thursday that Durham City had requested to take one of the two relegation places, courtesy of the Wakefield Express, reported as a possible life line from relegation for Wakefield. There was some confusion, with sources from Durham denying this, and the report being removed. However, it resurfaced on Friday on the Express' sister papers, the Harrogate Advertiser and Ripon Gazette, as a potential reprieve for Harrogate Railway Athletic, and quoting from an e-mail sent by the League to member clubs. Finally, the news was confirmed on the Durham City website.

This could therefore mean Cammell Laird, Wakefield and Harrogate Railway Athletic all avoiding relegation. So, those trips to Gallaghers Pub and Barber Shop in Birkenhead, Blind Jack's in Knaresborough, and the various establishments of Ossett could still be on the itinerary next season.

I am not entirely surprised by Durham's decision, as they are looking to return to the Northern League, with the much reduced travelling this would entail. When I started watching football in the early nineties, the Northern League had just joined the Pyramid, having previously refused to do so, as they felt their standard was sufficient to feed directly to the Conference when it was founded in 1979. Durham's resignation leaves only Whitby Town of the former Northern League clubs still in the EvoStik League (with Blyth Spartans and Gateshead having reached Conference North). The travelling will always be a problem for clubs in the North East, Durham's nearest club in the division was Harrogate Railway Athletic, 67 miles away. Changing the Division 1 split from north / south to east / west has been suggested, although this cannot change how distant they are from the bulk of the other cubs, swapping trips to Prescot with those to Grantham.

There is likely to be no candidate for promotion from the Northern League again this year, so you have to wonder at the tidy mind of the FA worrying that there are 14 leagues at step 5 feeding to 12 places at step 4, and planning disruptive changes to rectify the situation, when 2 of those leagues (the South West has the same problem) rarely feed to the next level.

This was all put to one side for the visit of Wakefield - on the principle of making sure on points, one from this game would put Prescot's safety from relegation beyond even mathematical doubt.

Steven Tames

The weather has not been as bad this season as last, so this was the first evening game since the clocks went forward, so the first to start in daylight. The evening light producing some shots with a clear sense of movement, although I was able to get the same effect under the lights.

Freddie Potter

It was a scrappy physical game, particularly in the second half. Cables' Stuart McMullen, fortunately one of our calmest players, collected an elbow in the eye when the referee's back was turned, and then received a punch to the same eye, for which the offending Wakefield player was instantly shown a red card.

Stuart McMullen

The end result was a 1-1 draw, which, leaving aside off field events elsewhere, was useful for both clubs, putting Wakefield 3 points ahead of Harrogate Railway Athletic with a far superior goal difference. The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.