Motoring through the traffic

Some feel that urban design is geared towards the car, to the extent it is difficult to navigate some towns on foot. However, places where roads long pre date the motor car can be equally difficult to traverse. Vauxhall Motors, Prescot Cables' hosts in our pre season game last weekend sounds like an urban industrial destination, but the club is in a rural location, separated from the eponymous car factory by the M53. The walk from the frequent Liverpool to Chester bus service is along a country lane without lighting (not a problem in the afternoon) or a pavement. I come from a village, so I am used to this, but there are a couple of stretches with right hand blind bends, requiring use of the generally avoided left side of the road, with your back to the traffic. The noise from the motorway makes it more difficult to hear whether there is a car approaching behind you.

I arrived, so I thought, a few minutes late, to find the players emerging from the changing rooms to warm up. I had been expecting a 2.30 kick off, but our kit was having its own motorway related travel problem, being stuck in traffic on the M56. Vauxhall lent us a spare kit.

Joe Evans & Jonah O'Reilly

I joined our Chairman to watch the players warming up, and we reminisced about the days one just emerged from the changing rooms and started to play. One exercise involved jumping up and starting to run from flat on your face, which might be useful playing one or two of our more robust opponents.

Once we were inside the ground, the pitch was in good condition, save for a need for some rain. It is aligned more or less east - west, so the sun was shining from one side. In the first half, the sun was hazy, with intermittent cloud cover, enough not to cause too many problems with shadows.

Paul Cliff

We have not got to the stage in the pre season programme of issuing team sheets, so if I want to add captions, I need to stick to players who are with us from last year or from previous seasons. I might be able to identify some from newly acquired Twitter followers, but I would not be sure enough to use them in a published post. The list of players returning continues to grow as people come back from holidays.

Ben Morrow

In the second half, I even got a goal sequence, from Danny Flood.

Once again we were able to secure the result league position might have suggested, with our scoring four goals in the second half to go with one in the first.

The return walk from the ground is slightly more hazardous than the journey out, as one of the right hand blind bends is alongside the motorway. I made it safely to the bus stop just in time for ... Ben Morrow and his father to pull up and offer me a lift.

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

Final score Vauxhall Motors 1 Prescot Cables 5.