Hattie Jacques?

Sometimes, despite the best efforts of all concerned, public address will give the opportunity for a mondegreen. As an aside, when I was working in Big Oil, I confused people by spelling Diesel with a capital D, after the inventor of the engine, but petrol without, as there was no Mr Petrol. I am, however, not sure whether to spell mondegreen with a capital M. On the face of it, it is named after Lady Mondegreen, but this is a mishearing of the words "They hae slain the Earl o' Moray, And laid him on the green". So, do we adopt a capital letter when the character is merely a trick of the ear?

The announcement that prompted these musings was a substitution for Farsley in their visit to Prescot Cables. Our announcer, David Williams, with his usual excellent diction, announced that a substitute was replacing "number seven, Matty James", which prompted the reference by someone standing near me to the late comedy actress of the title.

The afternoon started brightly, although the forecast suggested the rain would be back after the end of the game. I was able to use the sports mode on the camera, which was giving me shutter speeds of around 1/500s. I do not usually include pictures of play without the ball, the main exception being anticipating a header.

Enzo Benn

Whilst the weather was mild for the time of year, the sports jacket temperatures of the last few weeks are gone, with coats being the order of the day. Dave Powell appears unaware that his dugout has become a makeshift bar.

By the beginning of the second half, I switched to shutter priority at 1/320s due to thick cloud. The floodlights were turned on about five minutes into the half. 10 minutes later, the rain started, for a few minutes it was the heaviest we have seen in a game for a while.

Connor McCarthy in the rain - his mother was the only person who had not headed for cover

I thought the rain was easing off, so I emerged from the cover and headed for the gasworks side. My optimism was misplaced, and the pitch quickly acquired surface water.

Antony Shinks

The rain eventually eased off ...

Jonathon Lynch

... but was soon back.

Jamie Menagh

Oddly, more pictures than usual were best cropped into portrait format (five of seven on this page for example), which gave me a shortage of images for the Merseymart. They have introduced a fixed page layout for the sports page, so they do not need anyone with layout skills, the writers can drop two standard length stories into the allocated space. So, instead of being able mix any shape of picture with the text, it now needs to go in a 26x18cm box.

Like me, they seemed to like the visual effects of the rain, choosing this picture of Rob Doran.

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