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

Flags, firkins and flat caps

There was plenty to entertain the visitor at Prescot Cables game against Warrington Town. Admittedly there was no Shaun Reid, and, wst former Cables defender Lee Smith has maintained their form on the field, he exhibits a much calmer match day demeanour.

Lee Smith (left) watches Phil Bannister

Still there was still a flag display and collection for the Alfie Lund Fund, raising awareness for MECP2 duplication syndrome; a dance display at half time, and the little matter of a beer festival.

Alfie Lund Fund flag display

The latter attracted a few ground hopping bloggers, and I met Matt from the Lost Boyos, whose site I only found a few weeks ago, and who, in the manner of our Train Crew, enjoys getting to the game almost as much as being there. He shows the same respect for the flat cap as appropriate headgear for football as these pages, although his is an all year round trademark, rather than just for keeping his head warm or visiting the borders of the known world. I posed for and took the obligatory #NoFlatCapNoParty" double thumbs up pictures. The all thumbs match day photographer may not be the best person to let loose on your compact camera: my first attempt started a movie by mistake.

Whilst this was going on, I just about saw the visitors' first goal, from Ged Kinsella. We had a decent amount of the play up to this point, but had been unable to convert it. Warrington went further ahead with a second from Ciaran Kilheeny in first half injury time.

I then had an unusual assignment for me, some pictures of the half time display from the Dancebeatz Academy. The dancers had a lot of space between them, which worked live, and may have made a good video panning along the line, but I did not have anything with me to keep the camera stable. It would not have made much of a picture if I had put everyone in one frame, so a presentation montage seemed the order of the day.

I also took the opportunity to capture our new mural on the end of the toilet block. We have been around for a while.

With sunset after 6pm, you would not expect much drop in light over an hour earlier with consistent light cloud cover throughout. However, the shutter speed dropped from a fairly consistent 1/1000s at ISO 800 at the beginning of the game ...

Joe Nicholson

... to 1/500s hovering around ISO 1000 at the end.

James McCulloch

I have worked out roughly how the sports mode manages exposure. In the conditions I have encountered (I have yet to use the equipment on summer day), if there is enough light for shutter speeds over 1/1000s, it uses the most open aperture, at ISO 400. In lower light, it maintains speed by increasing sensitivity up to ISO 800, when it reduces shutter speed until 1/500s, then increases the sensitivity again, until ISO 3200, when it drops the speed until it is too slow to be practical, and I need to switch mode.

Jonah O'Reilly

The visitors added their third goal, and continued their march towards the title with a penalty ten minutes from time.

After the game it was back to the festival beers, with a neat system for the transition between the afternoon session (included in the game, and therefore free for season ticket holders) and the evening session. Beers were served up to 6pm in a plastic glass, and then after this only in a glass included in the evening entry fee.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google Photos here. Matt's Lost Boyos blog on the game is available here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 0 Warrington Town 3.

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

Value for money - 80p a goal

I did not plan to attend Prescot Cables' game at Kendal Town, as I found the 2211 train from Oxenholme gave a short connection to the last train from Wigan, with the risk of ending up there for the night. However, on the day, I noticed there was also a train at 2203 with a better connection and the option of returning via Warrington if it was delayed. On arrival, I adjourned to the excellent Station Inn. There is a sign outside the station informing passers-by that the pub is less than 3 minutes up the hill. This was fortunate: whilst WhatPub has the correct postcode, its map uses an incorrect latitude and longitude, which would have sent me in the opposite direction.

Only having travelled to the ground through Kendal before, I thought it would be uphill from Oxenholme, but it was the opposite, including a steep stretch just outside the station, meaning it would be uphill coming back.

Once there, I found the floodlights to be excellent. I also now understand the relationship between aperture and ISO in shutter priority mode - if I set the ISO to a lower value than I will encounter in the evening, it will always use the widest aperture attempting to reach it. I was quickly getting some of my crispest evening images of the season.

Joe Nicholson

We have not enjoyed much success at Kendal, and it looked as though this may be no exception when the hosts scored after five minutes. Somehow, the score stayed that way for the first half. The hosts increased their lead with two quick goals early in the second half. Antony Shinks pulled one back on the hour, but it seemed of little effect, as Kendal replied a couple of minutes later.

Antony Shinks

By this time, I was contemplating slipping off a few minutes early to be sure of getting the earlier train. At this point, the fun started. There was little point trying to stop a three goal lead getting any worse, as we have performed well enough not to have one eye to goal difference at the end of the season, so Andy Paxton made a triple substitution, or as close to triple as you can with the bright, shiny new electronic boards, replacing Antony Shinks, Joe Nicholson and Phil Bannister with Joe's brother Josh, Andy Scarisbrick and Charlie Duke.

This had an almost immediate effect, with goals in five minutes from ...

... Joe Evans ...

... Andy Scarisbrick ...

... and James Edgar levelling the scores, and having me checking National Rail Enquiries and Realtime Trains for the progress of the 2211. It is worth keeping an eye on both sites, the former gets its information from the train operators' Darwin system, and the latter from Network Rail's systems, and they do not always agree.

A fifth goal from Kendal seemed to have clinched it, but a final score from Lloyd Dean secured a point, and meant we got a very reasonable 10 goals for our £8 to get in, on a night when the four games in our division produced 32 goals between them.

Lloyd Dean shoots for goal

I think both sides had a player booked in injury time (we certainly did) for delaying the restart of play, a case of taking one for the team, running down the clock - having announced the added time, the referee did not extend it further - and preventing quick free kicks in dangerous positions.

By dint of a sharpish exit at the end of the game and a bit of power walking, I got Mr Google's estimate of 42 minutes to Oxenholme Station down to 24, and caught the 2203.

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

Final score: Kendal Town 5 Prescot Cables 5 (Shinks, Evans, Scarisbrick, Edgar, Dean)

Once in every lifetime

There was a surprise at Prescot Cables' game at home to Harrogate Railway Athletic, not least for supporter Chris Hayden, who has been watching for a few years, having worked with former player Enzo Benn. Being the mascot, usually performed by our younger supporters, can also provide amusing embarrassment for a stag do, and is the sort of human interest story that gets you in the paper. Here is Chris shaking hands with Harrogate captain Dan Thirkell, who always cuts a somewhat smaller figure than my expectation of a large Viking, like his near namesake Thorkell the Tall.

We had not been sure the game would go ahead, as snow had fallen on Friday, which Chris had volunteered his party to help clear. A rising temperature did the job instead, and, fortunately, the resulting water drained away rather than pooled.

The game got off at a quick tempo, but it was 20 minutes before we saw the first goal, from Rob Doran.

I had taken up position on the Gasworks Side for a few minutes, but the resulting photo only made it into the collection on the "goal is a goal" principle. Rob followed this with a goal from a header about 5 minutes later for which I got the picture I sent in to the paper.

This was followed up with an almost identical goal five minutes later, before the visitors pulled one back a couple of minutes after that. The scoring for the first half was completed with a fourth goal from Rob a couple of minutes from time.

It was then time for the half-time entertainment, provided by the stag party's penalty shoot out competition, with Danny Flood, taking the opportunity for some light stretching whilst recovering from injury, going in goal.

The second half seemed almost tame in comparison with the first, although the pace showed no sign of slackening. The only goal was scored in injury time by a Harrogate substitute, Dan Barrett. The stag party came to the loudly expressed conclusion he had a haircut which resembled a pineapple. I am not sure how they decided this, even if the default instruction of a number of hairdressers in the Harrogate area seems to be "not too much off the top".

Marcus Burgess gathers from Dan Barrett

Dan reacted to his goal by giving the supporters a cheery wave, which kept everybody happy.

After the game there was a presentation for the website's first player of the month award, which for February went to Jonah O'Reilly who has been solid in defence.

Jonah O'Reilly

There was some discussion as to when one of our players last scored four goals in a game, and nobody could think of anything more recent than Harry Grisedale scoring what From Slacky Brow to Hope Street records as a double hat trick in a Liverpool Non League Senior Cup game in 1959. It also tells us Harry was a full back, so presumably there were happy, as we are, getting goals from any part of the pitch.

One hopes that a marriage and its associated festivities is a once in a lifetime event; however, whilst one does not wish to be greedy, I hope this will not be the only time I see one of our players scoring this many goals in a game.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen on the club website here, and on Google photos (with a couple of extra pictures from the stag do) here.

Final score: Prescot Cables 4 (Doran 4) Harrogate Railway Athletic 2.

Goals scored, achieved and in progress

The weather for Prescot Cables' home game against Droylsden was nothing to write home about, being mainly cloudy. Fortunately it had not rained for a few days, allowing a full league programme. The dull grey light of an overcast day can confuse the white balance on the camera, and pictures alternate between a natural colour and a red hue, leaving people looking a bit puce. Tweaking the hue and saturation helps, and at some point I might try using a preset value. Raw files give more options to adjust white balance, but I am reluctant to use them for an afternoon game, as the disadvantages of buffering and processing time outweigh the advantages with my current equipment.

The visitors scored first after a number of our chances were saved, hit the woodwork, or went just wide. This seemed to be what we needed to press home our attack, with Lloyd Dean scoring the equaliser less than a minute later.

Lloyd Dean

The scores remained level at half time.

Not be outdone, Rob Doran scored 10 minutes into the second half. I did not get a picture, and the "sets off for goal" picture did not have the quality to make one of my press photos.

Rob Doran

Droylsden replicated our performance in the first half, scoring the equaliser almost immediately afterwards. Lloyd Dean made the crucial difference ten minutes later with his second goal.

The match report on the website was illustrated by the picture above of Antony Shinks. I cropped it as a crowd shot, although, as a number of people observed, many people take the opportunity of a throw into check their mobile devices, speak to their neighbours, or see what Jazz is doing on the Gasworks Side.

Jazz McCulloch

I was illustrating that crowds have increased by about 25% from last season. This more or less occurred as soon as Andy Paxton took over as Manager, and we have only had one or two league crowds below 200 since. The additional people (and those who have been around for a while) are seeing things on the field heading upwards. Lloyd Dean's first goal meant we have scored more goals than last season with eight weeks to go, more points after Burscough a couple of weeks ago, and more wins after the visit to Scarborough in January. Obviously we have to wait to see where we finish in the league, but it is a relief not needing to look sideways at the likes of Fleet Town to see who is better placed for reprieves from relegation. Researching this post, I see Fleet are having a better season too, so someone in Hampshire is probably relieved not to be looking at us.

Andy Paxton, Steve Pilling, Roy Grundy, Garry Williams

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 (Dean 2, Doran) Droylsden 2.

A traditional damp evening

"CTC members a bit thin on the ground", mused Paul of our Train Crew, posting from the Hop Vine in Burscough. Dr James and I arrived from Burscough Junction shortly afterwards to find three present: Paul, his uncle, and Frank, who came from Huyton via Wigan.

We have not had many evening games this season, but there are plenty to come, with 18 League games in ten weeks, plus at least one in the Liverpool Senior Cup. It was my first night game in earnest since I replaced my camera body, apart from one at Marine I attended more for a technical test. I was at Burscough a couple weeks ago, and knew we would be in for a tough game. I would have been satisfied with a good performance whatever the result.

James nearly caused a multiple pile up at the unfeasibly narrow turnstiles, as he tried to go through forwards wearing a rucksack. Once inside, I took a position by the covered standing along the side. It was showery, so it was handy to to be able to dart for cover without the need to wrap the camera. The floodlights are good, so I was happy with my exposures, particularly when play came close to me, even if I am still working out how the camera handles the relationship between aperture and sensitivity in shutter priority mode.

Joe Evans

Bram Johnstone had rejoined us, having made a few appearances in pre season.

Bram Johnstone

At half time I walked around the ground, past the substitutes warming up, checking the light at various points. As I did so, Connor Grainger sent a ball over the wall into the adjacent field, and briefly tried to climb over to retrieve it. Abandoning the attempt, he told me he was not built for climbing, which was just as well, as the notice on the wall warned of anti climb paint, so he avoided coming on later covered in the stuff.

During the second half I tried a few pictures from behind the goal, which I do not normally do in a ground with floodlights arranged on the sides. I was able to get some reasonable exposures, although when play was towards the touchline, players were in shadow with the rest of their surroundings not, and exposure correction on the raw file was only partially successful addressing this.

Lloyd Dean

I became more confident we would get at least a draw as the second half went on, and things got even better with a goal from Joe Nicholson. The Train Crew may have been a bit thin on the ground, but the cheer that went up showed quite a few people had made the short trip by other means.

Joe Nicholson

After the game the Train Crew divided in the traditional railway manner, with the front portion (Paul, his uncle and Frank) heading for the Bridge, adjacent to the eponymous station, and the rear portion, (James and me) returning to the Hop Vine, a minute or so closer to Burscough Junction, and, more importantly, a known quantity for working heating and decent beer. The former was essential after a traditional damp-getting-into-your-bones evening game.

For the second set in a row, there was a change to how I upload pictures. Google are retiring the Picasa application, so I need to migrate to Google Photos. The advantage is that pictures are uploaded at a higher resolution (some significantly so), the disadvantage is the "public on the web" sharing option has gone, so I cannot enable a viewer to follow a link to one collection and then browse the others.

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

Final score: Burscough 0 Prescot Cables 1 (Joe Nicholson).