Seeing red

After the first round of the Integro League Cup, Gibbo from Atherton Collieries asked on a forum about the draw for the second round, as this was the first time his club had been in the competition. Although we have competed for some years, I too was unaware of the second round, as I cannot remember the last time I needed to know. However, a competitive fixture is a competitive fixture, and our first round game at home to Bamber Bridge drew a crowd of 165, which was our average gate for league games a couple of seasons ago.

As I arrived, I was invited into the board room to take a photograph of memorabilia to be presented to the club: a photograph of Bob Wilkinson, who was known as The Walloper because of his distinctive hat, a name that attached itself to the club. From Slacky Brow to Hope Street tells us Mr Wilkinson was "the club's number one supporter, whose bellowing cries and other antics were a source of entertainment for the crowd during the first 10 post-war years". Readers can decide for themselves who best maintains the tradition. Bob's grandson Garry Wilkinson presented the photograph to board room host Harry Boydell who remembered Bob's support when he was playing for the club in the 1947-48 season.

Garry Wilkinson presents a picture of his grandfather Bob "The Walloper" Wilkinson to Harry Boydell

I took up position by the side of a surprisingly dry pitch. I had noticed in the previous evening game against Trafford that I was getting slightly better exposures at ground level than from the terraces. This was to be a new challenge, as the visitors were in a red strip considerably less reflective than Trafford's white.

Andy Scarisbrick

A light coloured strip has considerably more influence on exposures than you might think. Most of the images I chose for the final collection came out at a higher ISO than 12800, although strictly speaking this is only a barrier saving jpg files, as it is the point above which the D5300 does not offer full noise reduction. As I rely on Photoshop Elements for noise reduction, the trade off between grain and the image looking like it has been generated by CGI is a gradual one.

Alan Burton 1/200s f/5.6 ISO18102

I set the black to the lowest setting before starting to lose definition, which is particularly effective when players are seen against the sky.

Reece McNally 1/200s f/5.3 ISO25600

The visitors scored from a penalty and a second goal in quick succession.

For part of the first half, I went behind the goal, from where results were limited. On my way back I noticed we now have a properly stripey pitch, as a result of the professional maintenance paid for from the Supporters on the Pitch scheme.

We came for the second half looking more competitive. We have recently seen Dominic Marie depart to Marine and Tunde Owolabi to Stalybridge Celtic, with this blog wishing them all the best in their future endeavours. This provided an opening for Josh Klein-Davies, who has been on the books for a few weeks and marked his competitive debut with a goal.

Josh Klein-Davies shoots for goal

The game was starting to look more open until a rather dubious refereeing decision. Harry Cain appeared to be brought down in the penalty area, in a position where it did not look particularly advantageous to dive, but was adjudged to have done so by the referee. As he had already collected a yellow card, we were down to 10 men. This completely changed the game with Bamber Bridge making full use of their one man advantage to inflict only our second home defeat of the season.

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 1 Bamber Bridge 4