A sunny day at Stormy Corner

There are all sorts of things to do on a bank holiday, so it was natural that I should find the most attractive to be a visit to Stormy Corner, the home of Skelmersdale United. As the morning was cold and cloudy, venturing out placed me in a minority: the buses had none of the overcrowding that normally results from shoehorning Saturday demand into a Sunday service. Given that I did not go there for many years as I thought it was difficult to get to, I now find it is one of the easier grounds to access - only a few minutes walk from the bus stop. This information will need to go in storage: this will probably be the last League game we play at Skelmersdale for a while, as they look secure in their challenge for automatic promotion, unless the wheels come off in the last month of the season.

I arrived a few minutes early (I shall pause for a few readers who have known me for some time to recover their composure), and had time to watch the team warming up. I was able to warm up myself, as the sun had come out, and it was quite pleasant if you stayed out of the wind. The operative word there is "if", as we shall see later.

With our circumstances making it difficult to pay to keep a settled squad, many games this season have featured someone making a debut, and this was no exception, with Scott Thomas stepping up from the youth team to cover for injuries, and Josh Odukomaya making a first start after a number of games on the bench.

Scott Thomas

Josh Odukomaya

Skelmersdale's ground is a mixed bag for the photographer. The cover is limited, and there is no terracing behind the goals, albeit with space for it as and when funds permit in the future (the latter is not an issue, for still photography, the lower the camera position the better). The pitch perimeter fence is quite low (the 1.1m in the ground grading document is an ideal, not a requirement) so there is nowhere to rest my arms - an example of FA ground grading catering for the comfort of the amateur photographer. However, the east - west orientation of the pitch means that there are less light problems, particularly of players being backlit in sunny conditions, than at other grounds. The fence is an even regulation distance from the pitch, so you get some good close up shots when the players are chasing the ball to the goal line.

Carl Furlong

For the first half, the grass banking did a good job of keeping the wind off. However, in Stormy Corner, some corners are stormier than others, and the wind was whipping round the position I took in front of the board room and announcer's booth for the second half. I was rewarded with a good shot of our goal, from Liam Hollett, who is more often stopping the opposition scoring, which perhaps illustrates the bias that creeps in when choosing photographs.

Liam Hollett heads home for Prescot's goal

Score a goal, and it is on the record, so it will be the natural picture to illustrate the game. Block the opposition from scoring a dozen times, and unless one is a clearance off the line, there is no moment you can identify for the decisive contribution. Getting the ball away from an advancing forward can still make for a good image.

Dave Dempsey dispossesses Skelmersdale's Matty Hughes

Skelmersdale may have been expecting an easy win from this game, as their supporters were becoming rather unhappy, thinking, not without justification, that we were taking our time at set pieces. It was only in the last 10 minutes that their strength in depth started to tell, giving them the win. Strangely enough, when they went ahead, their supporters did not seem to find the restart of play to require quite so much urgency.

As the sun was well and truly out by the end of the game, I eschewed the bus back to Ormskirk, and walked through the back lanes instead - the advantage of Stormy Corner is that it is on the edge of the town, so a couple of hundred yards and you are away.

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