The brightest lights in town, part 2

With a small area in the Liverpool County FA's jurisdiction - eighteen miles from Liverpool Town Hall in Lancashire and eight in Cheshire - the pool of eligible clubs for the Senior Cup is small, with only four rounds to the final, as we found last season. For this year's first round, we were drawn away to Ashton Town. Whilst you should never underestimate your opponents, the hosts were propping up the Hallmark Security League.

Taking a bus through unfamiliar territory in the evening often needs the assistance of Mr Google's maps. Led street lights have many advantages over orange sodium lamps, needing less electricity, less maintenance, and giving more directional light. This is good if your bedroom window is next to a street light, but it makes it more difficult to see signs from a brightly lit bus. Regulated London buses have next stop displays, mandated by Transport for London, but mostly no WiFi, as operators are paid the same regardless of how many people use the service. Commercial services elsewhere increasingly have WiFi, a marketing point, but almost never next stop information, which is useful but unlikely to induce anyone to travel by bus.

Edge Green Street, leading to the ground, had newish houses, but no street lights or tarmac, which suggests the builder went bust without making up the road for adoption by the council. Once inside there was no problem with the floodlights, of a surprisingly high standard for this level.

The hosts' shirts brought an air of Croatia to a cold Wednesday night.

Our team looked quite cheerful.

There were a couple of additions to the squad - Jordan Wynne from AFC Fylde (who had been on the bench at Kendal) ...

Jordan Wynne

... and Jack Morton from Chester.

Jack Morton

Andy Scarisbrick made his first start of the season.

Andy Scarisbrick

I took up position under a floodlight pylon, probably the best place for general photos, but not the best to capture goals. The first came after a few minutes from Phil Bannister.

Phil Bannister

Josh Nicholson was next to score ...

Josh Nicholson

... followed by Jordan Wynne.

Nathan Quirk was next ...

Nathan Quirk

... and the league's record shows he scored the fifth just before half time, although I thought it was Josh Nicholson, as did Andy, who was managing the Twitter feed.

Rob Doran scored just after the break and again ten minutes later.

Rob Doran

He was withdrawn after a job well done, and replaced by Dominic Marie, who was next to contribute to the scoring. He illustrated the problem with second half substitutes in an evening game, when I decide to stay put for the half I do not get many pictures if they are mainly on the other side of the field.

Dominic Marie

Jordan Wynne completed the scoring with ten minutes to go. This was an encouraging performance for a side that has found it difficult to score, with plenty of players regaining the experience of finding the net.

After the game I accepted a lift to Prescot from Rod the drummer, whose presence had not gone unnoticed.

Sharing the car were the drum and stalwart supporter Harry Thomas - regular spectators can decide for themselves which makes the most noise.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on Google Photos here, and for those who like to view the game backwards (a consequence of Pitchero's new uploader) on the club website here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 9 (Bannister, Josh Nicholson 2, Wynne 2, Quirk, Doran 2, Marie) Ashton Town 0.