If you are not going to Yorkshire ...

... the next best thing is for Yorkshire to come to you.

Prescot Cables' scheduled game at Ossett Town saw Saturday morning scenes quite common at this time of year. Dewsbury and Ossett are good for beer and pubs, so a number of our train crew were waiting on the results of a 9.30 pitch inspection - the need for such an event does not usually bode well. The anticipated postponement found us all dressed up with nowhere to go.

I decided instead to attend Birkenhead Park's game at home to Sheffield. They have no FA strictures about turnstiles, so a table with a pile of programmes and a cash box is perfectly sufficient. However, they have moved it since my last daylight visit: had I arrived by bus, I would have seen it as I walked through the pedestrian gate; however, from the train in the opposite direction, it was hidden by the gate as I breezed through the vehicle entrance and wondered why nobody was taking money. Fortunately I stopped to look around, so the gate man attracted my attention and relieved me of £5 in return for a programme with one of my pictures on the cover.

The visitors' strip was blue and white with red socks.

These colours may have some civic connection, as Sheffield Corporation buses were white with blue trim and red wheels. That was until 1968 when the Conservatives won control of the Council, and the wheels started to be painted blue. When Labour regained control the following year, they went back to red. Another plausible version of the story is that a new general manager just preferred blue, but reckoned without the tyre maintenance contractors, who were notorious for not matching wheels, and changed his mind when buses started to appear with mixed wheels, like odd socks.

Followers of these pages will know the hosts' colours are also red, white and blue, which sounds like a clash (historically, the home side changed in such an event), but the different pattern meant the distinction was clear.

I took up position on the Park side. From the local weather, you would not have thought games were being rained off elsewhere, and the sun was behind me.

The visitors quickly opened the scoring, and had much of the play for the first few minutes.

We have looked before at the photographic potential of the line out. The principle is straightforward, the hooker throws the ball between the lines, and the players jump for it. Lifting was allowed in the nineties on the grounds everyone was doing it anyway. There is no requirement to throw the ball upwards, only for it to travel 5m horizontally, and we can see here that the ball has been thrown low, so the player at the front can catch it. I have never seen this, and was not expecting it twice more: it seems a tactic that relies on surprise.

The Park side is where the visitors' substitutes and coaching team are located, and on this occasion a photographer was with them. The jovial suggestion was made that I should buy some high vis and go the pitch side of the barrier, but I will stick to the spectator side, where there is no risk of interfering with the movement of the coaches. Having said that, with the gusty wind, players kicking penalties had to use a decent bit of force to make sure the ball went into touch, so I was relieved not to be fishing it out of the bushes.

Kicking off at 2.15 in the winter has become more or less universal at this level of the game, saving expenditure on floodlights. Naturally, the light fades towards the end, with the final whistle being around sunset, so I need to drop the shutter speed, giving the chance for another of those photos with the ball carrier reasonably frozen and everyone else slightly blurred.

This was an evenly matched game, with the hosts levelling twice, but unable to pull ahead, and finally falling to a converted try ten minutes from time.

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

Final score: Birkenhead Park 12 (T. Brown, Chidley, C. Hall) Sheffield 19.