Boxing Day internationals

On an otherwise dull Boxing Day, there is nothing like a bit of international football. On the pitch, Prescot Cables' game at home to Colwyn Bay was not much like international football - the accents of most of the visiting players suggested they came from the traditional recruiting grounds for many North Wales coast clubs of Liverpool and Manchester. Then again, when going there, I notice a majority of the television aerials point to Winter Hill rather than Moel-y-Parc.

I arrived in plenty of time after a surprisingly smooth journey - the margin being added to by ten minutes' delay to kick off caused by a power failure to the dressing rooms and board room. Although the sunset has been getting later for a couple of weeks, at this time of year the light depends a lot more on cloud cover. The floodlights were on and I used shutter priority from the beginning. Some were keen to add a splash of colour to an otherwise grey day.

The eyes of the crowd are on Brian Richardson's socks

Holiday time often means changes are required, and couple of players were keen to impress on their first start for a while.

Andy Scarisbrick

Once again we made no delay opening the scoring, with a goal from Chris Almond after six minutes.

Chris Almond shoots for goal

The visitors replied about five minutes later. I followed my usual practice of spending about twenty minutes on one side of the goal, then swapping sides.

Jordan Wynne

During this period, I sensed I was being watched, and looked up to see a large dog, of friendly demeanour, with its paws on the pitch perimeter fence, carefully inspecting my exposures. The dog's owner introduced herself: Samantha Heaps of Cryotherapy Liverpool, who offers treatment for sports injuries. It is a similar principle to ice packs, but uses a more intense cold to improve recovery times from injuries. Josh Klein-Davies had been the first to try it, and Samantha was looking for a few pictures to promote the service.

On the field, Chris Almond continued his run of goals to restore our advantage.

With the poor light and late start, most of the pictures in the final collection came from the first half. For the second, I went straight to the side of the pitch.

Reece McNally

A headed goal from Lloyd Dean ten minutes from time made the lead secure. I thought I had not got a particularly good picture, but it worked out reasonably well.

In any event, I got the ball in the net.

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 (Almond 2, Dean) Colwyn Bay 1