Eek, more Fish

I was once talking to a Lady Mayoress of Liverpool, who grew up in Dublin. She regaled me with the tale of a summer in the Connemara Gaeltacht, a school prize for her Irish language skills. She had enjoyed it, but there was a downside - "It was fish for breakfast, fish for dinner, fish for tea - by the end when the boats went out I was praying they would not catch anything." I feared we might have a similar weariness with Fish, when we heard Michael of that name, having scored four goals against us for Mossley before Christmas, had signed for our hosts, Brighouse Town.

I thought on the way that, had I known what the weather would be like, I would have set out earlier to enjoy walking in the Calder Valley. As it was, we needed to wait to find out how much rain there had been overnight. When the hosts started tweeting the playlist for music on the tannoy, I assumed there had been no need for a pitch inspection. I had some time in Halifax before catching the bus, so I went to the Minster and purchased a photography permit.

Discussing the weekly player movements at Halifax Minster

Arriving at the ground, I made a dead heat with my friend Roger, who first recruited me to the Cables interest, and his partner Angela, who had driven up from Hampshire for this game and for London Broncos' fixture at Swinton Lions the following day. Also watching were new local residents Stephen and Jill, the owners of Ged the Giraffe, an inflatable familiar to those who saw Dulwich Hamlet's championship winning season in 2012-3 .

For my pre match pie, I could have taken a metal fork, but I thought I might wander off and have to keep hold of it until half time, so opted for plastic. Not that everyone was as considerate: I spotted a home official fishing metal cutlery out of a bin where someone had dumped it in the same way as they would plastic items.

It was a bright, sunny day, and we were playing with the sun behind us, which was not without its challenges ...

Joe Herbert

although I was happy with some arty effects.

Ronnie watches the action

I managed some decent shots of Marcus Burgess in action without anyone in the way, which is not always possible.

Marcus Burgess

I remember Roger telling me that he visited a number of clubs when he first came to Liverpool, and returned to Prescot after winning the raffle on his first visit. He won on his first visit to Brighouse too.

My gold standard for a vegetable raffle is from Seaford Town (at home to East Grinstead Town in about 2004): a large basket, with the centrepiece of an enormous cauliflower. This one lacked the cauliflower, but was beating the vegetable shortage and the plastic bag charge, requiring six free carrier bags to take it away.

The shadows were lengthening by the second half.

James Edgar

The game had been evenly balanced until Valter Fernandes was controversially dismissed on the hour. You can see the video here: I have watched it a few times and eventually worked out why the referee reacted to a rather aimless swing of the arm, although he was shielded by the players from seeing the elbow that provoked it.

Valter Fernandes

As we had feared, Michael Fish made the most of the opportunity by scoring twice in ten minutes.

I do not think Brian Richardson likes making substitutions for the sake of it, and had made none until after 80 minutes. However, we needed to try to salvage something, so he then used all three at once. This brought an almost immediate benefit from Dominic Reid to our goal difference and goals scored.

Dominic Reid

After the game, I joined Roger going to Bradford, where I was entrusted with the Good Beer Guide and Mr Google's maps. We started with the excellent Corn Dolly, then Jacob's Beer House were encouraging popular devotion to St Blaise, the patron saint of wool combers, whose feast had been the previous day, by offering an eponymous Armenian style ale (I am not sure what was distinctively Armenian about it) from Salamander. To cap the weekend of catching up with friends, on my way through Manchester to the Swinton game, I caught up briefly with Matt from the Lost Boyos before he flew home from his own weekend sporting tour.

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

Final score: Brighouse Town 2 Prescot Cables 1 (Reid)