Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather

With Prescot Cables out of the FA Cup, the remaining opportunity for glory in a national competition (and an addition to club funds through the prize fund) was in the FA Trophy. In this year's Preliminary Round we hosted Scarborough Athletic, formed in 2007 following the demise of Scarborough FC, who had been the first team to gain automatic promotion to the Football League in 1987. We were surprised to see their minibus had been cancelled due to lack of interest, but we need not have worried, as plenty of supporters made their own way.

Our visitors' club badge features a well mannered Scarborough seagull, trained by generations of thrifty Yorkshire visitors who believe in eating t'chips for which they have paid good brass into understanding that the clue as to where to find its food is in the name. In contrast, the Llandudno seagulls I encounter if I have a day at the seaside are trained by more profligate visitors into thinking a share of every portion is for them.

The visiting manager, Rudy Funk, led the club to the Northern Counties East League Championship last season, previously enjoying success with Rainworth Miners Welfare. I am not aware of his having had a career in experimental electronic music, athough ...

Rudy Funk (standing) watches Rob Doran and Scarborough's Brian Hughes

The sky was overcast for most of the game, unlike the last few afternoon games. This means we do not need to worry about shadows, although with the automatic sports mode on the D5000, the results tend to be a bit dark, which is easily fixed on the computer.

I even got a picture, from behind our own goal, of our goalkeeper making a save without anyone else in the way of the picture.

Nick Culkin

It was a competitive game.

Alexander McMillan

Based on the fairly unscientific evidence of my own estimate of how many shots I was taking close up and how many were in the other half of the pitch, I though Scarborough had the better of the play.

At half time, I was chatting to another photographer, building a portfolio for his degree. He had been at the Cammell Laird game, where he found the light a bit murky. We had comparable kit (he had a D90: I had a lens with a longer focal length), so were getting shutter speeds of around 1/1000s. He asked about the floodlights, as he was planning to attend a midweek game. I gave a couple of tips, like standing under the floodlight pylons, and that he would find it amazing how slow a shutter speed you can get away with if you do not mind motion blur on the feet, so I shall be interested to see how he gets on.

All lenses are trained on Enzo Benn

The game was still competitive after Scarborough scored the only goal, but the struggle became uphill when Carl Furlong was sent off for an incident off the ball. I was following the ball, so did not see it, but there was a suggestion, even from some Scarborough people, that both the players involved should have received a yellow card, rather than one yellow and one red.

The result means we will  not now be visiting Stocksbridge Park Steels' ground on the edge of the Pennines in the next round, but will instead enjoy the more prosaic delights of entertaining Farsley in the League.

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