In 1991, when I first started watching non League Football, the internet was a distant dream. For information we relied on Team Talk magazine and the Non League Directory, the latter still going strong. Digital photography was for space exploration - on land we used film and it cost money for every shot, so you needed to be good to get a return for your money. I once tried photographing a match on film: it cost me £7 or £8 at 1993 prices, the shots still needed cropping, and I did not have anywhere to show them.
For players and clubs, a highlight would be a photograph in Team Talk. They had a team of photographers, amongst whom was Dave West, who died on Monday. Dave was a supporter of Croydon FC, although I wonder how he found time to watch them as he was a familiar figure on the southern non-league circuit. Even as an irregular supporter at Dulwich Hamlet I would bump into him two or three times a season, a cheerful gentleman who seemed to know everybody. As well as football, he also covered rugby league and ice hockey.
When digital cameras of sufficient quality for sports work became affordable, the pictures from the likes of Dave were a standard against which we could measure our work. Even in the era of club websites, and people like me trying to get every player in a collection, the print media, and the work of those who give much of their time to recording the wider game remain popular.
I had not seen Dave for a while, these days "it is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk", but I know he will be missed by those in football, rugby league and ice hockey around London, and there will continue to be those of us looking to follow his example in standards of both work and conduct.
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