Not as warm as it looked

For Prescot Cables' last game of the season, at home to Bamber Bridge, we were joined by the Mayors of Prescot and Knowsley, and by the Member of Parliament for our side of the High Street, George Howarth. My initial assignment was photographing the visiting dignitaries as they were presented to the players. In the presence of the mayors, I was very good, and did not attempt my Larry the Lamb impression.

The Mayor of Prescot meets Andy Paxton

The win away at Ossett Albion earlier in the week allowed for a positive end to the season, ending our run of losses. Although league position was not at stake, we could finish on a positive note and set down a marker for next season.

It was fine and bright, although the weather people told us we were under a system bringing air from the Arctic. One of my favourite bloggers, Matt from the Lost Boyos, who I met a few weeks ago, had gone to AFC Fylde wearing shorts. I mentioned on Twitter that the ground is somewhat open, but he was already there and found out for himself. I was in my trusty, and reasonably warm, sports jacket, but unequipped for a party, or for keeping my head warm, as I had not brought a flat cap.

Marcus Burgess

I started behind the goal we were attacking, then joined members of the Train Crew, who decided to inspect the Gasworks side, so I spent a fair part of the first half around the half way line. Alistair Waddecar has been mentioned in these pages as regularly causing trouble for us, and today was no exception as he scored, after 24 minutes.

James McCulloch

For the half-time entertainment we were we joined again by Dancebeatz Academy so I took a few pictures of the display. The weather and the dance routine lent themselves to still photography more than at the Warrington Town game, so I should have some decent pictures to send them.

For the second half I took my usual position behind the opposition goal of most of the game. A goal from Rob Doran secured a point, to give us our highest tally for three or four years. We had already secured a higher placed finish than the previous season for the first time in about 10 years, all of which we can build on next season.

Rob Doran

After the game, James Edgar received his award as Player of the Month for April. After last month's low resolution photo for the website, I downloaded a raw converter and a photo editor for my phone. This sorted out the resolution problem, but it was not powerful enough to fix the problem of some idiot taking the picture with everyone's back to the window. ... Ah yes, that would be me.

James Edgar receives his award - photo rescued with a proper raw editor

We created a rather better background for the End of Season Awards, as we had sponsorship.

Joe Herbert, Young Player of the Year

The end of the season is always an emotional time: you know next season's team will not be quite the same, although we have been remarkably settled this season, and most looked happy to come back. Congratulations are due to Charlie Duke, who has secured a professional contract with Torquay United. Best wishes are due to Joe Evans, who received an award for 100 appearances, and indicated he is not minded to add to them, as he wants to spend more time with his young son. Then again, I only believe retirements when pre season training is under way, some players have been having a last season for years!

The one, the only, the original Joe Evans

This season's progress on the field has been matched with income generated by our Commercial Manager, Steve Garnett. After the awards, he joined the Train Crew for a chat - a few minutes later we were all £20 lighter and proud owners of squares in the Supporters on the Pitch scheme.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here - sharp eyed readers can spot which three pictures the Pitchero uploader mysteriously splatted. The pictures from the End of Season Awards can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 1 Bamber Bridge 1 (Doran)

No ticket required

Prescot Cables' game for the penultimate weekend of the season was away to Warrington Town. This would normally be easy to attend, but, with the hosts likely to win the Division, they were anticipating a capacity crowd, and made the game all ticket. I thought that was a bit over the top, but that they would easily double their average home gate. I was unsure, due to other commitments, whether I would be able to attend. I was not prepared to buy a ticket I might not use, so it changed a 50-50 chance of attending into definitely not.

Finding myself free after all, I looked for a game somewhere I do not regularly go. Within the travelling time available, the most attractive option was Atherton Collieries, entertaining West Didsbury & Chorlton, third versus fourth in the North West Counties League. I last visited the club with Prescot Cables on the final day of the 2002-3 season.

If there is a more eerily quiet place at 2.30 on a Saturday afternoon than Atherton town centre, I have yet to find it. It was not just that there were few people about (the smoking ban at least means a couple of people outside pubs, on my last visit the place was completely deserted), there was hardly any traffic either. It was only near the ground that there seemed to be any activity.

The ground was much as I remembered it, apart from the tea bar being to the side rather than behind the goal, where it had been perfectly placed for a "tea bar massacre" (when a stray ball goes through the hatch, one hopes without any more serious consequences than some scattered stock).

The pitch has a significant slope, which I also remembered from 2003. In the first half of that game, the hosts had a penalty, which their taker would have placed perfectly if the ground between the spot and goal had been flat. As it was, it went six inches over the bar. In the second half, our taker had been observing carefully, as he put the kick we were awarded into the roof of the net to secure the North West Counties League title.

I took up position towards the bottom of the slope, so the visitors were attacking towards me.

I finished my pie before giving pictures my full and undivided attention - if I apply the maxim of food before photos for our games, I will certainly do so visiting the neighbours. The lighting conditions were close to ideal, with bright, but not glaring, light, allowing plenty of frames with shutter speeds at 1/1600 or 1/2000s, and very little processing required.

There are usually a couple of throw ins in a collection, they are easy to capture, but you wonder how some positions are physically possible.

I approached the game as a neutral observer, but I got more frames in the second half, when Atherton were playing towards me, so they got the balance of the final collection. There was intermittent cloud cover, so shutter speeds dropped in many cases to 1/1000s.

I do not look out for our canine chums, but I often snap one if I see one. I generally find them fine looking creatures, although I am not that confident around them, being more of a cat person.

After the game, I adjourned to the Jolly Nailors, advertised in the programme, for a quick pint before my train. I am not sure if the locals I encountered at the bar were nailors (they either make nails, or maintain the teeth in a carding machine), but they seemed jolly enough as they knocked on the bar and called out "service" to attract the barman's attention.

Back in Warrington, there was a pay gate after all, which I found out on the way to Atherton. I did not miss much, with the champions putting six past Prescot with one in reply (I am told that was a superb Rob Doran free kick). The declared attendance, i.e. the number of people who paid, not necessarily the number who actually used their tickets, was 1411, more than I expected, but substantially less than capacity.

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

Final score: Atherton Collieries 2 West Didsbury & Chorlton 0.

All a bit quiet

At Prescot Cables' game against Ossett Town, Rod, our drummer, was unusually quiet. His Vicar was on holiday, so Rod was looking after his dog, and left his instruments at home. This can be an occupational hazard of going to church, although it is unlikely to fall to me. Our Vicar has a cat, who does not accompany anyone to football, and who looks at me with the disdain that can only be mustered by a cat determined to remember my accidentally treading on his tail 18 months ago.

Rod's Vicar's dog - I'm sure his collar should be white

We were joined at the game by friends and family of Dermot Allister, a long standing club volunteer who died recently. Dermot will be remembered at the club for many years to come for the murals he organised, the tiger visible from the top of Hope Street, and the 1884 mural unveiled last month.

Whilst we have been sure of league safety for a few weeks, we have for some time met teams who have a greater need for points, and coming off second best from the encounter. The visitors were no exception, in a struggle with Harrogate Railway Athletic, against whom we suffered a defeat earlier in the week, to avoid the remaining relegation place.

I started the game in front of the tea bar,

Charlie Duke

and then worked my way round behind our own goal and along the Gasworks Side,

Shane Glean

to behind the goal we were attacking.

Phil Bannister

The visitors had the balance of play, so I made my way back to the side, where I stayed for most of the game. One goal in the first half, and two in the second, secured the result for Ossett, the last being from David Brown who has featured in these pages on many of our encounters with Yorkshire.

David Brown

A positive aspect of our season is that we do not stop looking for goals, and we secured a late consolation from Oliver Grundy, his first for the club since joining us the transfer deadline day last month.

Oliver Grundy

After the game, I had another duty, photographing the presentation for the Player of the Month for March, won by Lloyd Dean.

We did not quite get the presentation in before the Grand National, so I found myself watching it, which I never make a conscious effort to do. Despite growing up near a racecourse (or perhaps because of it, having the village person's natural suspicion of all things connected with the village next door), I have never followed horse racing. Steve Garnett, our Commercial Manager, likes to get a picture of the presentation on the website as soon as he can, so I tried using the camera's WiFi and the Nikon Wireless Mobile Utility to process the picture whilst still out supporting a pitchside advertiser.

Bram Johnstone playing against Burscough

Steve was happy with the result, but I found that, having loaded it from the camera as a jpeg, then cropped it on the phone's photo editor, the quality was borderline acceptable for the size at which it displays on the website. However, every time you save a jpeg file, including uploading to many websites, it loses more information, so it was looking decidedly pixellated when it made it to Twitter.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final score: Ossett Town 3 Prescot Cables 1 (Grundy)

Left over from November

Last week saw Prescot Cables' game against Tranmere Rovers in the quarter final of the Liverpool Senior Cup. This was originally scheduled for November, and fell to three weather related postponements. The competition has about eighteen entries, and we can see the complications elsewhere from this winter in larger counties.

The week had not started well. After a run of games against sides at the top of the table, our visit to Harrogate Railway Athletic, which I followed on Twitter, had been every bit as challenging, with Harrogate in a battle with Ossett Town to avoid the second relegation spot. An early lead was overcome by the hosts following injuries to Rob Doran and Lloyd Dean. From the x-ray the latter posted on Facebook, showing a distance between humerus and scapula you would not expect to see with the arm still attached, I thought we would be asking if he was going anywhere nice for his holidays and checking we had his number for pre season training. However, his assurances he had dislocated that shoulder before and it just popped back in proved to be well founded, and he was in the starting lineup.

Lloyd Dean

I have seen Tranmere knock us out of this cup twice before, once in about 1993, and more recently winning a semi final on penalties after a 4-4 draw at Prenton Park four seasons ago.

The visitors fielded a young side, mainly from the Reserves augmented by a couple of first team players, all decked out in nice reflective white.

Joe Evans

I was pleased to see Andy Harper playing after a long period out of action with a recurring injury.

Andy Harper

We had held our own for most of the first half, until the visitors scored a minute or two from time, just the right time for a morale boost for them. We then had our own chance, with the referee adjudging that Josh Nicholson's shot had not crossed the line, an assessment that did not meet with universal agreement.

Josh Nicholson shoots for goal ...

... and it is cleared off the line - or maybe not

It started started raining heavily at the beginning of the second half, so I took shelter under cover at the Hope Street End. I even got some pictures from this position, which would have been almost impossible with my previous kit. I was still there so see Phil Bannister score our first goal.

Phil Bannister watches his shot head for goal

The rain eased after about 15 minutes, so I went outside to the Gasworks Side. I was starting to ponder the dreaded penalty shootout, which comes if scores are level after normal time, sensible for a competition played mainly in the evening. However, after 82 minutes, a ball from a goalmouth scramble fell to James Edgar who put it away. This was the same minute of the game as he scored at Northwich.

James Edgar scores - a goal most definitely is a goal

Whereas that was a consolation, this was the winning goal. I was pleased to see James scoring again, he has been useful keeping defences busy all the season but has not seen this rewarded with goals. Also, scoring is as much as anything about confidence, the more you do, the more you can see yourself doing so again.

The result took us into the semi finals, although, given the limited time available, I was concerned this may be a season, of which there have been eight in the past, mostly in the sixties and seventies, where the competition has not been completed. The draw took place, and we will play Litherland Remyca, a name which, bizarrely, the voice function on Google Keyboard can spell, which was to be a treat for the forthcoming bank holiday, but will now form part of the pre season programme.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here and on Google photos here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 2 (Bannister, Edgar), Tranmere Rovers 1.

Nineteen

It was only some fortuitously placed roadworks on the way from Northwich Station to Witton Albion, where Northwich Victoria play, that made me think twice before confidently heading off down the wrong road. Once going in the right direction, the hiss from the outdoor steam pipe trunk distribution venue seemed louder than in November, although it is not yet emitting anything visible. For those who like football with industry in the background, Witton offers a suitable vista. I am not sure whether this is where they generate the steam, or if they pipe it in.

I usually look for a team sheet, but I do not make an exhaustive search, as someone usually puts it online, and I only need it after the game for captions. Had I seen one, I would have noticed something I had been anticipating for some weeks. With the proviso that I do not know the exact age of James Burke, standing in for Marcus Burgess, I was confident that, for the first time, I had been watching the club since before the starting lineup had been born. Not only that, but the average age of the outfield (and I think this applied to the whole XI, James Burke did not look that old) was 19, which I do not recall seeing before.

With four games in eight days, we needed to spread resources, so it made sense to put out some younger players, particularly those playing their first season at this level, for a full 90 minutes against strong opposition.

Andy Scarisbrick

Connor Grainger - returning from representing Knowsley in the Dallas Cup

After five minutes, Danny Flood was injured and replaced by James McCulloch - who was about 6 months old when I started watching, and just took the average back into the 20s.

The hosts scored twice in the first 20 minutes, and we were not without chances, with Rob Doran and James Edgar having the ball gathered from their feet, and Rob having a penalty turned down after being pushed over in mid air. We pulled one back shortly before half time. I am not sure what the sight of Rob Doran considering his options for a free kick does to the opposition but it scares me!

In this case, he elected to go directly for goal. The perimeter fence is some distance back from the goal line, which means I need to be near the corner flag to get a decent angle without the net in the way. The reward is being able to get a shot like this.

There was a presence from the landlords at half time, maintaining their playing surface.

In the second half, the hosts showed they had no intention of letting the game slip, with three goals in a ten minute spell. Despite the game being out of reach, we were still looking for goals with a second consolation coming from James Edgar.

James Edgar

When I reported back to my friend Roger, I managed to add another to the opposition tally. It may have been to do with not having had much to eat or drink due to a slight bug, being dehydrated, lacking carbs, and rustling up goals as a figment of my imagination. I did the same at Farsley at the beginning of the year. This time I did not even have a disallowed goal to explain it, the balance for that having been with us.

This was another in a run of games against teams challenging for the playoff positions, in which the hosts remain secure despite having had points deducted for fielding an ineligible player earlier in the season.

The rest of the pictures can be seen on the club website here, and on Google photos here.

Final score: Northwich Victoria 5 Prescot Cables 2 (Doran, Edgar).

What's that yellow thing?

I was unable to attend Prescot Cables' game at Radcliffe Borough, but I had enough time after Easter preparations to go to Marine for Grantham's visit. I found the rest of the afternoon was my own earlier than I expected, encountering my first weather related abandonment in 25 years, after a downpour in the first half left a dozen large pools of water on the pitch. How much water had been deposited in 15 minutes was illustrated at Prescot Cables after two days with no further rain, with the area around the tunnel still thick with mud, and sand applied in the goalmouths.

Easter games are associated with fine weather, and for the last few years we have been at Warrington Town. However, it was only three years ago we were playing Goole in front of cleared snow. With the clocks going forward, some leagues were putting away the yellow ball for the summer, although we manage without all year round. It's grim up north. The weather for the visit of Burscough was cool, but a yellow ball was starting to break through in the sky. Some of us were positively basking in it.

We made a few signings on the registration deadline day in midweek. I suspect most will be for cover for injury or absence. The first was called into service: with Marcus Burgess away, Zach Hibbert took his place in goal.

Zach Hibbert

Paul, our programme editor, likes to give everyone a fair number of appearances on the cover. I do the same in my collection over three or four games, but the programme aims for a balance over two or three months, longer than I track, so I occasionally have a request to look out for a player. If you try this in play, you are likely to miss some of the action, but it is usually easy enough to find some of the right frames afterwards.

Josh Nicholson

The first half had been fairly even, but the visitors, who are in the play off places, came out stronger in the second half, scoring after a couple of minutes. If we had not secured league safety, I would be worried about our run in, with a significant proportion of our games in March and April being against sides near the top of the table.

The sun was fully out by now.

Phil Bannister

I had gone back to shooting in raw again (it may be some time before I fully make up my mind on that question), which gives a better result when I need to even out the lighting on a player who is side on to the sun and therefore half in shadow.

Rob Doran

Since the camera does not do any sharpening of the background, it seems to give a better definition to the players in some of the images.

Lloyd Dean

The visitors sealed the result, and made it look a bit more decisive than it was, with a couple of quick goals in the last two minutes.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final result: Prescot Cables 0 Burscough 3

Salamanders in the dark

This week saw the third of Prescot Cables' more difficult games in a row. Having played away at second placed Spennymoor Town, then entertained the League leaders, Warrington Town, it was now the turn for Spenymoor's return visit. One of our regular supporters described a long midweek trip a few years ago (which I believe ended with a  late postponement) as "Bloody Blyth Bloody Spartans on a Bloody Tuesday night". Someone in Spennymoor may well have been saying something similar about the distance they would be travelling for this game, which did not stop them bringing two coaches. I was not sure whether that was down to numbers, or to the team and officials travelling separately from the supporters.

Despite having procured a new camera body before Christmas, this was the first time I was able to use it for an evening game at home. During the bad weather most of our Saturday home games went ahead, and most of our midweek programme now is the result of postponed away games.

At home, the visitors play in black and white. On the road, they are in a more muted deep red. As well as not being particularly reflective, it is not easy to reproduce on screen without making the rest of the colours (our shirts, players' faces etc.) look decidedly odd, so the end result is a sort of burgundy.

Marcus Burgess

I took a few shots from in front of the clubhouse, where there the light coming from the stand slightly augments that from the floodlights, but this is balanced out by less ease of movement, and the dugouts being in the way of a good view at the narrower angles.

Bram Johnstone

I therefore headed round to the Gasworks Side. As I was speaking to Dr James, I invited him to join me, which he did, after showing an initial look of concern. As we went round, I snapped a couple of pictures from behind the goal, something that would not have produced anything usable on my old equipment, although the colour can bleed a bit an the higher sensitivity, giving the players a bit of a Ready Brek style hue.

Phil Bannister

Once in position under a floodlight, I had the option of keeping the shutter speed at 1/250s and making maximum use of the sensitivity range...

Danny Flood

... or drop to 1/200s and minimise noise.

Joe Nicholson

During the course of the evening I moved towards the latter approach, although the amount of the frame I need to crop out probably has more impact on the quality of the image.

The game was decided by a goal from the visitors towards the end of the first half, tightening their grip on second place with its associated home advantage in the playoffs.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final result: Prescot Cables 0 Spennymoor Town 1