An apple, a tangerine and a bag of nuts

I do not have children of my own, but if I did, I suspect they may not like my ideas about a traditional Christmas present. Not for me the delights of Xboxes and Play Stations, whatever they are, I would be dispensing the fruit and healthy comestibles of the title. Tangerine is also probably the most popular description of the colour orange when applied to a football kit.

Prescot Cables' visit to Salford City was our last pre Christmas trip of the year. I was expecting the trains to be packed with shoppers, there were warnings two weeks previously of queues to get in to the station, but there were fewer people around, and therefore a more pleasant journey, than I anticipated. There are no decent pubs (or, as far as we can tell, any pubs) near the ground, so Richie, our leader in beer and pub choices, guided us to the New Oxford in central Salford, which has an excellent range of real ales and Belgian beers. Sometimes I think it might be fun to order one of the latter with the correct pronunciation, complete with short wave radio effects on the gs, but the landlady seemed so knowledgeable I think she would have been correcting me.

We were in our red away kit, and Salford were in their usual tangerine.

Connor McCarthy

On first sight, we were a bit concerned that the colours were a bit close together. On the whole, I think they were sufficiently distinguished, although there might have been a problem if there had been thick cloud - in which case they would probably have been a bit close if we had been wearing amber too.

Being a week after our earliest sunset, it was two minutes later this week, with the difference in longitude between Prescot and Salford taking a minute off. That minute made all the difference - well, not quite all, the absence of thick cloud may have more to do with it. The ground is in a natural dip, but there there was still some sunlight for the start of the game.

Paul Cliff makes his first start

The sun soon dropped below the surrounding houses, leaving an even light, supplemented by the floodlights.

Dave Dempsey explains how to get happier and healthier. A goal usually does the trick for me.

Salford have a larger than usual gap between the pitch perimeter fence and the touchline. A few years ago, some clubs with this arrangement would change the width of the marked out pitch from game to game to play to the weaknesses of the opposition, cramping a team with good wide players, or giving a team with fitness issues more ground to cover. Such shenanigans are not allowed these days at our level, with leagues imposing tighter restrictions on the permitted size of the pitch, and requiring clubs to stick to the dimensions they have registered.

It was nearly two years since I was last at Salford, with last season's fixture having been in midweek and inconvenient for travel due to engineering works. Looking back, I made the observation on that occasion that the pitch was in one corner of the available surface, but it seemed more centrally placed this season. One effect of this is that the dark patch that usually occurs at the base of the floodlight pylons in the side arrangement is not on the touchline.

Robert Gilroy progresses near the touchline

The gap also avoids one of the pitfalls of taking pictures from the side with a 70-300mm lens, namely that a player running along the touchline can come too close to be able to capture from head to toe in a landscape frame. I have not developed the manual dexterity to flip the camera to get the frame in portrait orientation with sufficient speed to continue to capture the action.

The best illuminated spots remained on the edge of the penalty area.

We can get an idea of the illumination at the touchline from the player taking the throw in - usually in this sort of situation, he would be shrouded in gloom.

Despite the good photographic opportunities, the game was not one of our best performances - the rest of the pictures from the afternoon can be seen here.

Final score: Salford City 2 Prescot Cables 0.