An actual warm day

The day of Prescot Cables' game at home to Mossley at the weekend was one of those spring days when you choose your clothes in the morning, thinking you need a coat, to find by early afternoon that you could really do without it. Now all I need is a couple of properly warm days to re-wax it: it missed out last year as, by the time I realised it was warm enough for the wax to soak into the cloth, it no longer was.

The day's mascot was Alfie Lund, a regular attender at games across the league and beyond, and one of only about 120 children in the world with MECP2 duplication syndrome. My attempt to take a presentation picture with the starting lineup was thwarted by Alfie being literally the only person looking in the right direction.

Once you have a high vis and a big camera, you get random photo requests, which is all very well, but I wonder where to publish them. This week's request came from the Mossley bench.

At least when our own supporters are giving me a cheery wave, I know they want to be included in the collection.

With the bright light, for the first half I mainly stayed in shutter priority and managed my own speeds, keeping the aperture as open as possible, making for a nice soft focus background.

Lloyd Dean 1/1250s, f/4.3, ISO125

We have started well in the last few games I have seen, but it was not to be on this occasion, with a fairly disjointed performance.

Our secretary team were keeping a sharp eye out for anything untoward.

Matty Roberts (Assistant Secretary) & Dan Roberts (Club Secretary)

There was a rumour that the visitors were particularly affected by their fixture backlog and concerned they were likely to tire after 60 minutes. In this situation you can do worse than build a lead and hope to hang on to it. The tactic seemed to be working with Mossley 2-0 up at half time.

In the second half, the Gasworks Side was providing pictures for a few family albums.

Mr Graham Edgar watches James

We were playing much better in this half, although it started to look as though we would not find the net, until Harry Cain got through with a couple of minutes to go.

Harry Cain shoots for goal ...

Celebrations were brief: goal difference is all very well, but not much use without the points to get you in position to benefit from it.

... and gets back for the restart

Chris Almond secured the result with seconds to go.

Chris Almond

Scenes ensued.

These were scenes that involve beer being abandoned in an upwards direction. Fortunately I was nowhere near where it came back to earth.

Steve Pilling collects the empties from the goal celebrations

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 2 (Cain, Almond) Mossley 2