An evening at home

This season we have had a distinct lack of evening games in the League - this week saw just our second at home, we have had two away, with only a couple of postponements. Oddly, the league have planned a full programme for the Sunday between Christmas and New Year on the grounds that so many clubs have progressed to the First Round of the FA Cup. Whilst this is true, I am sure it could be resolved, and, as our league usually schedules for Boxing Day, Saturday and New Year's Day, whereas the Ryman and EvoStik Southern play two out of three, I am not convinced exceptional circumstances were entirely unwelcome.

However, the immediate business this week was a game against Radcliffe Borough, who have had a mixed start to the season since they beat us in our first away game in August, so a win was necessary to improve our place in the table relative to a team in a similar position to us. With so few evening games, I had become a bit unused to our own ground and floodlights at night. Our visitors were in red, not the most reflective of colours. That made sense of the decision to use our away kit against Goole, it avoided a rush to launder the home kit.

Former Cables player Danny Lambert defends against Sam Corlett

Our best light is to be found along the touchlines, and I position myself on the quieter gasworks side. There is an element of luck in what I am able to capture at an evening game, so I did not get anything usable of any of our goals

For the first, Rob Doran was brought down for a penalty, which he converted, and the defender was adjudged to have denied a goal scoring opportunity, taking Radcliffe down to 10 men.

Rob Doran

A wide view of the goal tends to be quite well lit.

There is also a video of Ciaran Gibson saving this free kick, taken from behind the goal.

The result was made secure in the second half, with a first goal for the club from James Gardner, and a late one to add to the goal difference from Matty West.

James Gardner

Matty West

It has been a mild autumn, and there was just dew forming on the grass, rather than the frost we often see by this time of year. As the heating was off in the bar, I did not linger after the game, although my house was similarly cool, I have also been taking advantage of the weather to keep the gas bill down.

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

Final score: Prescot Cables 3 (Doran (pen), J Gardner, West), Radcliffe Borough 0