It never rains in Southern California

At Sedgley Park on the other hand...

I have not seen much of Lancashire's campaign in the rugby union County Championship for the Bill Beaumont Cup this year, sticking with football for the end of the North West Counties League season. However, I was free for the last game, against Cheshire, at the familiar venue of Sedgley Tigers (or Park, as those of us of a traditional bent pronounce it). The weather in Manchester was as expected, with the air close enough to give me an urgent desire to open a window, until I remembered I was already outdoors.

I am always surprised by the number of spectators at these games wearing wellingtons. Facilities vary between grounds, and the authorities are not as keen as in football to ensure you stay on the hard standing, but even so, it seems like overkill. Wet weather protection was, however, needed quickly after the kick off, as a large cloud dumped its load on us.

You do not expect to see steam coming off the scrum at this time of year.

Once the rain had passed, the light was fairly even, with the sun occasionally poking through light cloud. There were more dark clouds in the distance, which I hoped would not bring more rain, as I had a line of washing out to dry.

I experimented a bit with the resulting images. A disadvantage of shooting in raw is the extra processing time, so I was looking to speed this up. I tried the ViewNX 2 software that came with the camera. If I want to make changes to the raw file, it does not have any speed advantages over Photoshop Elements, and indeed seems considerably slower. However, if the only changes could as easily be made to the jpg, it offers a batch conversion. As this uses a lot of cpu resource and little memory or disk, whereas editing uses the opposite, I can start editing as soon as a couple of jpgs have emerged from the process.

The results seemed quite crisp.

It was not always as clear what was going on.

It even looked at one point as though the referee was thinking of making a move with the ball.

Lancashire have been successful in these encounters for the last few years, with the county almost being an extension of the successful Fylde sides, and reaching seven successive Finals. With a number of players appearing to have retired, and a change of management at Fylde, Lancashire's dominance looks to be slipping, with the visitors securing a clear win to claim the place in the Final. Things were worse the other side of the Pennines, with Yorkshire finishing bottom of the group.

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

Final score: Lancashire 11 Cheshire 27.