Daylight saving

When I posted a collection of pictures from a Prescot Cables Reserves game in February, I got some appreciative comments from the players, who must often feel their work goes unobserved, so when I had the opportunity to catch their last game of the season, against West Kirby Reserves I was happy to get along. This was technically our home game, but played at West Kirby, having previously been postponed due to pitch availability issues at our normal home base.

Lee Owens keeps the ball under pressure

One of my most memorable afternoons watching Prescot was at a Reserve game, in about 1993. 5 or 6 of us who had watched the club at University got together, with a view to watching the First Team away to Skelmersdale. This was before the days of websites and text messages, so it was more than a little inconvenient when I met the rest of the party at the bus stop to tell them the Echo was reporting the First Team game was at Bradford Park Avenue instead - my first attempt to attend an away game at Skelmersdale thwarted, the mission finally being accomplished some eighteen years later. We therefore went to Prescot, and were in luck, as the Reserves were hosting Castleton Gabriels. Our small but noisy crowd took up position behind the goal, much to the consternation of Castleton's manager, who complained to the referee that we were putting their rather youthful goalkeeper off.

There was no such crowd on this occasion, with the club being represented off the field by our Chairman, Tony Zeveron, also fulfilling the duties of Match Secretary. Despite looking at the teamsheet, I omitted to take a picture of it, or to wrtite down the names, so my knowledge of the players' names was limited to those who had made first team appearances, from those who have been called upon regularly by the First Team, such as Chris McGann and Francis Foy ...

Chris McGann scores his first goal of three

Francis Foy

 ... to those called up more recently, like Liam Davies and Adam Castley.

Liam Davies

Adam Castley

The game kicked off at a surprisingly late time of 6.45, but this proved to be sufficient to complete the game in daylight, with the bright light often found near the coast, and sunset due at 8.42. A friend was off to a game in London the same evening, which had to start at 6.15, as sunset there is about 20 minutes earlier. It's grim up north - but not at this time of year!

Even the First Team can sometimes find less than the full 5 substitutes on the bench, with players absent due to injuries or work commitments. This can be even more so with the Reserves, with only two substitutes named on this occasion - both of whom were used towards the end of the game. One was the manager, Joe Gibiliru Snr, who had registered himself as a player for such an emergency, 21 years since I first saw him play a game for Prescot. He had, I believe, also played a full 90 minutes for the Reserves on the previous Saturday.

Joe Gibiliru Snr comes on as a substitute

The Reserves have inevitably been affected by the First Team taking Amateur status, with Joe having stepped into the breach when the previous Reserve manager resigned fearing that he would be left with no team if they were called upon to replace departung First Team players. He has done an excellent job maintaining a stable team, and finishing in a respectable 4th place, just behind New Brighton, which will have some resonance for those with memories of the Lancashire Combination days of the 1950s.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.

In reserve

With Prescot Cables having no first team game at the weekend, and with no rugby union fixtures (they sensibly leave a couple of weekends free at this time of year to play any weather affected fixtures from earlier in the season), I was looking for a game to watch.

Lee Owens, who does an excellent job publicising Prescot Cables Reserves games, posted on the forum that the Reserves were playing at Ashville, in Wallasey. Reserve team matches are often at the same time as First Team games, and the ground at which they play their home games is not convenient for me, so this was a good opportunity to take some pictures of the hard work the Reserves put in.

Lee Owens

The function of a reserve team at our level of football can sometimes appear somewhat nebulous. Some clubs use them to provide a stock of players in the event of a replacement being needed in the first team, or allow first team players to regain match fitness after an injury. That is probably the case at a minority of clubs: whilst players can and do progress from the reserves to the first team, in many cases the first team and the reserves can seem to operate as completely separate entities, and some clubs have dispensed with a reserve team altogether.

Shaun Reid seems to be making more use of the Reserves than his predecessor - he attended the match, and has called up a couple of players for a chance to prove themselves in the First Team. Liam Hollett was playing, to regain match fitness after a month's suspension. Not that he did anything heinous, it was the usual "suspended from all football until Prescot Cables have completed three First Team matches" for a red card at the beginning of January: unfortunately two of the three matches were four weeks apart.

Liam Hollett holds off the opposition

The Reserves are self financing, so the players pay to cover the costs of playing, so to keep costs down, only a referee is supplied by the league, with the two managers acting as assistants. Non neutral assistants only adjudicate on throw ins, leaving them free to manage.

Prescot Cables Reserve Team Manager, Joe Gibiliru

As this was a one off occasion for me, I tried to get a picture of all the players. I took a position at the side of the pitch, firstly because my usual position at the end can mean I miss our defenders, and there was a lot of space for the ball to go at the M53 end, so I thought I might find myself spending a lot of time retrieving it with 4lb of camera kit flapping in the breeze.

The players seemed to be happy with the results, I had a couple of appreciative comments when I posted the pictures on the web forum. You can see the results for yourself here.

After the game, it was off to the Cheshire Cheese, where they had Higsons Best, revived to the original recipe by the Liverpool Organic Brewery, and the second half of England v Wales rugby union on the television. Wallasey has one of the curses of being at the bottom of a hill, every chimney bristling with television aerials pointing in multiple directions, most to the North West transmissions from Winter Hill or Storeton, but a few deciding the best signal was the Welsh transmission from Moel-y-Parc, a proportion that seemed to be reflected in the respective support for England and Wales in the pub.