Goal celebrations

Astute readers may have noticed that my collections have included a few goal celebrations recently. The management are decorating the home dressing room with action photos, and wanted celebrations too. I tend to stop once a goal has gone in, to join in the applause, and to view the pictures, so I have been training myself to keep snapping. At least I am not doing the video: Glyn, our camera operator, explained to me that the Pitchero software captures the 20 seconds immediately before he identifies the scorer and upload, giving realistically about 7 or 8 seconds to initiate the process. For Prescot Cables' game at home to Colne, I took my new approach one step further by missing all the goals and capturing all the celebrations.

The weather forecast gave us some concern, with an overnight temperature of -2ºC. The ground is often a degree or two colder than the rest of the town, and an overcast sky would mean a frozen pitch would not thaw. As it was, the temperature was nowhere near as low as expected, so there was no issue.

The cloud meant we had the floodlights on from the beginning. However, it was light enough for me to spend all my time behind the goal, rather than resort to the Gasworks Side, so I was able to get the advertising in the background for the sponsors.

Ben Cartwright

Team captain James McCulloch was injured, so joined the management on the bench, and modelled one of our new hats, which sold out on their first day on sale. These pages are of the #NoFlatCapNoParty persuasion, but they do look very smart.

The Management (and Andy)

We had a couple of missed chances in the opening few minutes, which we thought we might regret later against the team with the best away record in the league, especially when the visitors opened the scoring with a shot almost from the touchline after a quarter of an hour.

The visitors had the best of the game in the first half. but things looked up in the second. Dominic Marie got to an attempted clearance to open our account.

Dominic Marie celebrates his goal

The visitors restored their advantage a few minutes later, almost immediately cancelled out when Lloyd Dean headed home a cross. The visitors may have had cause to be aggrieved, as it looked as though the ball went out of play in the run up, but the linesman was closer than us and did not flag.

Dominic Marie congratulates Lloyd Dean

We secured the points fifteen minutes from time when Chris Almond looked to have accidentally deflected a shot away from goal, but had put it just inside the post.

Celebrating the third goal - Chris Almond is in there somewhere

After a good team performance, the Rogues and Rascals Barbershop Man of the Match award went to James Edgar, whose consistently good play was once again rewarded. This time I remembered to place the advertising board a bit higher so we do not give the player a haircut in cropping the picture for the website.

Club Secretary Howard Nulty presents James Edgar with his award

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 3 (Marie, Dean, Almond) Colne 2