Numb were the bedesman's fingers

In The Eve of St Agnes, Keats tells of a maiden following the rituals of St Agnes' Eve, by which, it is said, she will see a dream of her future husband, unaware he has decided to visit, risking the wrath of her hositle family. Being immune to such things, the part I remember is the description of the bedesman in the first few verses, and the particularly cold January night on which he is saying his appointed prayers.

Prescot Cables visited Durham City on St Agnes' Day, and the cold lived up to expectations. It was not our bedesman's still cold, which we encountered on the same weekend last year, and which led me to wonder if a 3G pitch could freeze, but a strong, icy wind, taking an uninterrupted course from the Arctic to New Ferens Park. The question was who would take best advantage of the conditions, and whether I would still have a set of functioning fingers by the end of the game.

Tony Shaw preparing to take a throw in - Harry and Dave watching closely and trying to keep out of the wind

Despite the wind, it was another fine, sunny day, leading to excellent shutter speeds for the time of year. A low sun is not without issues, as a lot of grounds have light coloured concrete walls and advertising boards, so players are almost as backlit as with the sun behind them. Take this example with Prescot's Ashley Ruane.

The solution is the same as when the sun is behind a player - lighten the shadows and darken the hightlights, not perfect, but we can see what is going on.

The first goal went to Durham, which did not fill us with confidence, but Prescot started to take advantage of the conditions with an equaliser from Joe Gibiliru and went ahead with a short range tap from James McCulloch.

James McCulloch (no 4) celebrates his goal

I thought the second half may be better for me, with the wall providing some shelter, and worse for the players, with the wind favouring Durham. I was wrong on both points, with a third goal being supplied by Steven Tames.

Durham's floodlights have a pylon at each corner with 5 or 6 heads on each pylon, which is less common at this level than pylons down each side. With the latter arrangement, I find it better to go to the side of the pitch when the lights are on. Having tried it with the corner arrangement at Dulwich Hamlet and Durham, I found it confers less advantage. At least it gave me chance to get a couple of pictures of a good save from Stephen Longrigg.

And finally ... I do like a picture that looks like something completely different from what is actually going on.

For the avoidance of doubt, Cables' Chris Rowntree has NOT just delivered a kick to his marker's posterior!

Unlike our bedesman, who slept amongst his sackcloth and ashes at the end of his night's prayers, I consulted the Good Beer Guide, and retired to a nice warm public house to thaw out.

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

A large crow and a yellow ball

I was in London last weekend, so I watched Dulwich Hamlet entertain Bognor Regis Town for a top of the table game.

Sol Pinnock gives his marker the slip

A post on the unofficial forum advised that the turnstiles would be opening early, as a large crow was expected, an observation that caused much merriment amongst both sets of supporters. In the event 717 people turned up, Dulwich's best attendance for some seasons, but no crow, just a few pigeons.

It was a bright, sunny day, the low sun normal for January, with the pitch facing directly into the sun. I would have preferred the sun behind me, but Dulwich won the toss, and sensibly elected to make Bognor play into the sun. I therefore took a position at the side of the pitch for the first half.

It is not always bright in January, so the Ryman League require that a yellow ball be used during the winter months. They only require a single ball to be available, so when the yellow ball went out of the ground, and took some time to find, we carried on with the normal red and white ball. Not that I found it any more difficult to see ...

Lewis Goncalves keeps an eye on the yellow ball ...

... whilst Junior Kadi has no problem tracking the red and white one.

... and in the North, where you might expect it to be darker, you will not see a yellow ball, as the EvoStik League uses the red and white ball all year round. It's grim up north.

I also met my friend John from the Southwark News, the excellent local paper - he usually taps me for a photo when I see him at a game. I will talk more about press photos in future posts, but the days of local papers having armies of photographers are long gone: the club that can provide a couple of press ready photos is more likely to have pictures in the paper. I usually send John a link to my web collection, and he indicates which high resolution copies he wants, but this time I knew I may not have the collection ready in time for press, so I sent three I chose myself.

Here are the three I offered for the paper.

Frankie Sawyer shields the ball

Phil Wilson makes a save

Peter Adenyi holds off his marker

You can judge whether I picked the best of the collection here.

Gleaming white kit

Tuesday saw Prescot Cables play their postponed Liverpool Senior Cup game against Southport. I had not enjoyed Saturday's game against Witton Albion, so I was hoping for a good Prescot performance and an exciting game, and I was not to be disappointed, despite the eventual result.

Southport took to the field in an immaculate white kit, not just the "after" photo in a Daz advert, but a quick dunk in the radium as well.

Joe Gibiliru greets Southport goalkeeper Matt Nemes

With the pitch still being a bit damp, it would not stay that way for very long!

It had me thinking, in evening games under lights, does it make a difference what colour kits teams are wearing? I think it does. I was disappointed with the lighting on my photos from the second half of the Witton game, even after I remembered to adjust my shutter speed down to 1/200s. Witton were playing in predominantly red, so I am not surprised that I was more satisfied with the results with Southport's all white kit.

Sam Coulter in defence

I use spot metering under floodlights, so the camera will adjust the exposure for the lighting on the player on whom I am focussing. I have tried matrix and centre weighted, but these gave too much weight to the background, which, as I am pushing consumer kit as far as it will go, often meant an imossibly grainy picture, or no picture at all. Oddly, I even preferred the results I was getting with the Prescot players, who were playing in the same kit in both games.

Francis Foy returns to First team action

The players seemed to have a marked preference for playing on the left (from the direction Prescot were attacking). A bulb was out on a floodlight pylon in one corner, which, whilst still compliant with the standards, and not affecting play, did give an issue for photography as a lot of play in the second half was concentrated in the darker corner. I tried taking some pictures from behind the goal line in this corner, but decided I would be better staying with the best light and capturing anyone who strayed into it.

The players gave us a closely fought game that was a credit to both clubs. Both of Prescot's goals came from Steven Tames ...

Steven Tames heads home his first goal

... and both were cancelled out by Southport, the second with the last kick of regular time. Extra time saw no goals, so the game went to penalties (I think the first time I have been present when a game has been settled on penalties), with Southport prevailing 7-6.

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

Lot's wife comes to tea

I had been wondering what to say about the visit of Witton Albion to Prescot at the weekend, when a quick bit of butterfingers on the keyboard provided a start.

I put in a draft title for the post, thinking of the salt mining heritage of the town of Northwich (Witton is the historic name for the centre of the town, reflected in the name of the parish church, St Helen's Witton), and the Biblical tale of Lot's unfortunate wife, who disobeyed the instruction not to look back when fleeing the Cities of the Plain, and was turned to a pillar of salt as a result. Such tales are not confined to the Bible, many places with natural rocky pillars have a legend of a notorious local person who came to a suitably solid end.

I then started the post, with a capital P. Well, that was the intention, but instead of shift, I pressed Ctrl+p. In most applications, that brings up the print dialogue box, but in Blogger it publishes your post.

Phil Cooney has had to stop playing again due to work commitments,

Phil Cooney in his last game of his current spell, against Salford City

which is bad news for the team, as he has made a significant contribution in the few months he has been able to play, but reduces the scope for accidental posting. Once I had posted the title, I was stuck with it: although it is possible to change it after it has been posted, it is not advisable, as it will start to appear in searches, and lead to an error message when people follow the link.

Stephen Longrigg makes a save

The game was a closer in the play than the 3-1 scoreline suggests, with all the Prescot players putting in a good performance, especially after Liam Hollett was shown a rather harsh straight red towards the end of the first half.

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

A Tale of Two Cities

My main clubs have the good fortune to have a unique name: there is only one Cables, and one Hamlet. It is different in Finland, IFK is a network of clubs in Sweden and southern Finland, although I am not aware of the name being particularly associated with one club outside its own location. I have some sympathy for clubs with a name ending in United or City, as the media take the view that these names refer to one club, based in Manchester. This must be especially annoying when your club is in the neighbouring City of Salford, which, in the middle ages, gave its name to the Hundred covering the whole of south east Lancashire.

At the time of Prescot's fixture against Salford City a couple of seasons ago, I was working at Salford Quays. One of my colleagues, Liam, was a Manchester City supporter (an allegiance inherited from his father and grandfather, so we can let him off). Chatting about the weekend, he mentioned he was watching City. I did not have the quick thinking to come back with the riposte that, on the contrary, as we were in Salford, it was I who would be watching City.

On my way to the same fixture, a tourist got on the bus and asked the driver if he went by City's ground. It was tempting to assist, but that would have been mean. There were no such challenges on the way to this game, although First added to the Bank Holiday fun by choosing that day to change the fares, so passengers took twice as long to board, as they rummaged for change. They were mostly loaded with shopping, so I am not sure how they did not find out about the new fares on the way in to town.

I therefore arrived at the game a few minutes late, as Salford's goalkeeper was about to leave the field with a rib injury. Steven Tames took advantage of the stand-in finding his feet (a necessary precaution even for a draw, as we have not kept a clean sheet this season). He has missed a couple of times recently when it seemed easier to score, so hopefully a good goal like this will increase his confidence.

 For the photographer, the first half was in the low angled light of a bright day at this time of year.

For the second half, the lights cast a good light in the middle of the pitch, and in the goalmouth, which is often surprisingly dark. All grounds have their quirks, and Salford has a large perimeter, with the pitch in one corner, so the perimeter fence is close to one touchline and one goal line, but 6 or 7 yards away on the other two sides. It is not as large a gap as a running track, but it can make a difference to the available range if, as I do, you restrict the use of the focal length of the lens under lights to obtain a better aperture. The quality of the light made up for the distance, and I was able to catch action in both goals.

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

Gary Ablett R.I.P.

Along with many people involved with football, I would like to express my condolences to the family, friends and former team mates of Gary Ablett, the former Liverpool and Everton defender, who died at the weekend. I would especially like to extend my best wishes at this time his son Fraser, who has featured in these pages playing for Prescot Cables this season.