Salamanders in the dark

This week saw the third of Prescot Cables' more difficult games in a row. Having played away at second placed Spennymoor Town, then entertained the League leaders, Warrington Town, it was now the turn for Spenymoor's return visit. One of our regular supporters described a long midweek trip a few years ago (which I believe ended with a  late postponement) as "Bloody Blyth Bloody Spartans on a Bloody Tuesday night". Someone in Spennymoor may well have been saying something similar about the distance they would be travelling for this game, which did not stop them bringing two coaches. I was not sure whether that was down to numbers, or to the team and officials travelling separately from the supporters.

Despite having procured a new camera body before Christmas, this was the first time I was able to use it for an evening game at home. During the bad weather most of our Saturday home games went ahead, and most of our midweek programme now is the result of postponed away games.

At home, the visitors play in black and white. On the road, they are in a more muted deep red. As well as not being particularly reflective, it is not easy to reproduce on screen without making the rest of the colours (our shirts, players' faces etc.) look decidedly odd, so the end result is a sort of burgundy.

Marcus Burgess

I took a few shots from in front of the clubhouse, where there the light coming from the stand slightly augments that from the floodlights, but this is balanced out by less ease of movement, and the dugouts being in the way of a good view at the narrower angles.

Bram Johnstone

I therefore headed round to the Gasworks Side. As I was speaking to Dr James, I invited him to join me, which he did, after showing an initial look of concern. As we went round, I snapped a couple of pictures from behind the goal, something that would not have produced anything usable on my old equipment, although the colour can bleed a bit an the higher sensitivity, giving the players a bit of a Ready Brek style hue.

Phil Bannister

Once in position under a floodlight, I had the option of keeping the shutter speed at 1/250s and making maximum use of the sensitivity range...

Danny Flood

... or drop to 1/200s and minimise noise.

Joe Nicholson

During the course of the evening I moved towards the latter approach, although the amount of the frame I need to crop out probably has more impact on the quality of the image.

The game was decided by a goal from the visitors towards the end of the first half, tightening their grip on second place with its associated home advantage in the playoffs.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final result: Prescot Cables 0 Spennymoor Town 1

Sable salamanders

The trip to Spennymoor Town is our longest of this season, involving a train to Durham and a bus. TransPennine have even less unreserved seats than in the past, with the high numbers in coach B succumbing to the march of the little white tickets. A lot are reserved for less than the whole journey, but with no system of putting them together to make more available for longer journeys bought on the day.

The bus to Spennymoor is an Arriva Sapphire service, with handy things like charging points and free WiFi. The former supplied enough oomph for the charge on my phone not to go down, but not enough for it to go up. For the latter, I logged on to the Arriva Wi-Fi, only for the bus from which I was getting a signal to drive off. I should have used something called Moovbox instead, which I worked out by a process of elimination, as the only one that did not disappear as we left the city centre.

Once at the ground, I started towards the the end of the pitch where our players were finishing warming up, which was the end we would be defending for the first half.

Andy Paxton

Once play started, I moved slowly up the touchline up to the end we were attacking.

Joe Herbert

The hosts had a strong team, most of whom looked quite well built, and scored after about 15 minutes, at which point I noticed I had not changed the setting on my camera from taking pictures in Durham, and had been shooting in raw. Having spent some time in these pages discussing issues with this, particularly buffering, I was surprised  I had not noticed. However, this was a lighter day than when I last tried, and I was using ISO values between 400 - 800 rather than 6400 and higher. This makes the file about 5MB smaller, so is quicker to save to the card and more can fit in the buffer. This sounds counter-intuitive, as you would expect more detail on a bright day, which is true with film, but with a digital file, size is increased by noise in the darker parts of the picture.

I am not sure I got the white balance right: it looked better when I let the camera do it when I had switched to shooting in jpeg.

Phil Bannister with my choice of white balance

Sam Staunton-Turner captured with the automated settings

An injury to Sam Staunton Turner after half an hour saw the return to action for James McCulloch, who had been out for a few weeks with a knee injury.

James McCulloch

Now the new website is up and running, one duty of the match day photographer is taking player profile pictures, although a quick glance round social media suggests they are quite able to select their own. Charlie Duke, on loan from Torquay duly obliged. I should point out Charlie is local, Torquay are not on the habit of lending their players to random clubs at the other end of the country.

Charlie Duke - photobomb by Andy Scarisbrick

We had hoped to take advantage of the slope in the second half, but the strength of a Spennymoor side firmly in a play off place took its toll, with the hosts scoring two further goals.

The light got brighter towards the end, producing a few odd reflections.

Danny Flood

With nothing much at stake, I made a fairly swift departure at the end, and was able to catch the bus in time for Evensong at Durham Cathedral. As for the salamanders in the title, you will find one on the top of the club and town crest.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here.

Final score: Spennymoor Town 3 Prescot Cables 0

A murky day and a clean sheet

"Can you hold this for a second", I said to Jack Phillips' brother Anthony, as I passed him my lens hood at the beginning of Prescot Cables' game at home to Spennymoor Town. He looked a bit nervous, as people often do when I hand them a random piece of camera equipment, so I reassured him he was holding a £10 piece of plastic, rather than a £400 piece of kit.

It was a relief to have a game at home, the last one having been four weeks ago, with four away games and a postponement (I am sure there is a film in there somewhere) in the intervening period.

Spennymoor are third in the table, suggesting they made a good decision not to apply for promotion from the Northern League until they were confident they were in a position to manage at this level. Reports suggested some of the visiting supporters regarded the game as a foregone conclusion. Not that we did : we do well at picking up points where we are not expecting them (having dropped a few we were expecting as well).

The Met Office app predicted expect rain, which fortunately did not start until near the end of the game, although an overcast sky meant the light left something to be desired. I started with the sports mode on the camera, and got some shots at 1/400s.

James Jenkins

However, the cloud got heavier, so I switched to shutter priority at 1/320s.

Oscar Durnin

In goal was Ben Morrow, who ensured his place in the stories supporters will be telling when we are in our dotage by making his first touch in senior football a penalty save in the corresponding away fixture, and today making his first start for the first team.

Ben Morrow

Ben is the latest product of our youth team to make a first team start, with Andy Harper having established himself in a regular place since making his first start over the Christmas period.

Andy Harper

This was a game for solid defence, which does not always give the best pictures, but was a good game to watch.

One of the difficulties for a player manager is knowing when to use himself on the field, and I think Neil Prince exercises good judgement, this time increasing our threat going forward and bringing his experience and fresh legs into play at 75 minutes, often a dangerous point of the game for us.

Neil Prince

Although a winning goal looked possible, from about 80 minutes on I was feeling we most needed a clean sheet, for Ben Morrow on his first full game, but also for team confidence, as they have been hard to come by for the last few games.

Elsewhere, New Mills had been, unlike us in midweek, unable to overcome Harrogate Railway Athletic, and Padiham suffered the same fate as us at the hands of Salford City, which opened the gap below us, and with Radcliffe Borough also losing, took us up one place in the table.

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

Final score: Prescot Cables 0 Spennymoor Town 0.

First impressions

I remember an article a few years ago in When Saturday Comes in which the writer, from Spennymoor but no longer living there, drew strange looks from watchers of a televised game by cheering when the commentator announced, "The referee is Mr George Courtney from Spennymoor in County Durham". After last week at Darlington, it might be wise to send a couple of tickets to Mr Courtney when Shaun Reid comes to town.

We should have first visited the Brewery Field nine years ago, but Spennymoor United failed to fulfil their fixtures at the end of the 2004/5 season, the fallout taking us to the playoffs for a place in Conference North. Evenwood Town became Spennymoor Town after these events, and have had a successful few seasons in the Northern League, waiting to apply for promotion until they attained financial stability.

Dr Phil the Pharmacologist, now researching in Edinburgh, took advantage of the border still being open to join us (as did the chap with the "Yes" badge obstinately blocking the view of the hand pumps in the Market Tavern), even if his luggage for his impending holiday nearly travelled without him. I once went on a gloomy November day to Mangotsfield United with a suitcase: a fellow supporter went over with a crisp packet, and lifted up the smaller bag I had put on top, thinking it was a litter bin with a lid.

There is a traditional sign over the gate.

The ground has a sloping pitch, which we can see against the main stand, presumably built to replace the clubhouse facilities lost in an arson attack in 2003 that led indirectly, through loss of income, to the demise of the original club.

James McCulloch, and a strategically placed flag

Our Reserves now play their home games at Hope Street, which we hope will make the teams more integrated, with the Reserves used to try players with potential for the first team and to give players match time returning from injury or suspension. Neil Prince watched the Reserves in their first home game earlier in the week, and called up Jack Hont to the first team.

Jack Hont

We were expecting Spennymoor to be a strong side, and they did not disappoint. Everyone was called into action in defence.

Phil Bannister and Ciaran Gibson deflect an attack

It is said that you only get one chance to make a first impression. Whilst I think very much of the team aspect of the game, once in a while there is a debut you will talk about in years to come. In the 78th minute, Ciaran Gibson mistimed an attempt to gather the ball from the advancing Lee McAndrew, and was adjudged to have denied a goal scoring opportunity. We had a substitution left, so off came Sam Corlett, and on came Youth Team goalkeeper, Ben Morrow, making his first appearance in Senior football.

Ben Morrow takes up position ...

... and makes his first touch a save.

After this, with 10 men and Matty West playing through the effects of recent injury, all efforts went in to defending our goal, with a couple more decent saves, and the defence backing him up well, to ensure we came away with the draw.

Matty West

On the way out, one of the home supporters expressed surprise we were celebrating a point - the answer being that we were not expecting one. In our league position in recent years, every point matters, and getting one from a stout defensive display can be just as inspiring as a win.

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

Final score: Spennymoor Town 0, Prescot Cables 0.