Is there a Doctor in the house?

The match sponsorship for Prescot Cables' game at home to Warrington Town at the weekend was paid for by staff and students from the University of Liverpool Pharmacology Department in the name of regular supporter Phil, an energetic recruiter of new spectators, who has successfully completed his PhD. These pages are a stickler for etiquette, so we can only start calling him Dr Phil when he has donned the robes and shaken hands with the Chancellor. For the same reason, I shall refrain until then from asking him to take a look at my dodgy knee.

In these times, people are a bit concerned about mentioning pharmacology and sport in the same sentence, but we need not be worried. Phil has shown synopses of a couple of his papers online, and they seem to be, as far as I understood a word, about pharmacological markers for alcohol induced liver damage, not so much performance enhancing, as coping with the end of season party.

Our match sponsor (in bar scarf) watches Jack Webb

A match against Warrington Town is always a good one to sponsor, with a keen local rivalry, especially as it was their first visit to Hope Street since our former manager, Shaun Reid, left after 8 games in charge to take Warrington into the Football League.

Shaun Reid in characteristic pose

Shaun Reid's brother, Peter Reid was also in the crowd. Richie, our leader on pub and beer choices for away games, asked Peter to tweet that he was going to be at Prescot Cables in the way he does when he visits better known locations. He kindly did so, resulting in at least one enquiry from a family about admission prices.

Also in the crowd was the star of last season's Liverpool Senior Cup heroics, and scorer of some useful league goals, Steven Tames, playing in the same colours, but now with Southport, whose game away to Braintree Town had been postponed.

Steven Tames (in grey) and Dave Powell watch Jon Bathurst in action

This was always going to be a competitive game with honour at stake, Warrington wanting a win to keep their play off challenge on track, Prescot wanting to take at least a point from our former manager, and all points are useful to keep us ahead of Goole, Garforth and Ossett Albion.

As this post has a study theme, I can record that I arrived in Liverpool for that purpose many years ago, and have remained ever since. One of our new players, Enzo Benn, has followed at least the first part of that path, having come from Brighton, where he played along the coast for Worthing, initially playing for Cammell Laird before joining us.

Enzo Benn

The first half was played in sunlight, with the usual challenges that the low winter sun provides. The cloud came over for the second half, making for a much more even light. As I was able to take my usual position behind the goal, so when the Prescot goal came, I was in a good position to capture Liam Dawson scoring it. I had a choice of two images to send in to the Merseymart.

I chose the first one, as it shows better that Liam scored the goal under pressure from the Warrington defender, and there is less open space, which does not look good on the printed page.

As it was, they had a space to fill that would not have taken the portrait format, so they used this one of Luke Edwards instead.

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