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).

A word from our sponsors

Before Prescot Cables' game at home to Brighouse Town, I was buttonholed by our new commercial manager, Steve Garnett. He asked if it was possible to take some action shots in front of the advertising boards: whilst I occasionally crop a picture so the board is included, I had not thought of sending them to the advertiser. Our commercial activity has increased recently, including new advertisers, and a Cables Commercial Twitter feed, forwarding our advertisers' tweets, so we see their names even when we are not at the game. We are benefiting from new contacts Steve has been able to bring to us, and ideas to give them extra value for money. I would not set out to concentrate on the boards, it would be a quick way to miss out on pictures of play. However, there are a few pictures I have identified where I can make a slightly different crop for the sponsors.

We also have a new Pitchero website, which has been in the pipeline for a while. Our former website, created a few years ago by our webmaster Geoff was a definite improvement on what was available at the time, but the Pitchero template has improved, many other clubs use it, and we really need the facility to have more than one administrator. I can upload photos directly, without having to try and embed a link, for which Geoff and I made several attempts, with the method of creating the link in Picasa seeming to change every week.

The game started with the weather bright and dry, with the shadows falling in the usual parts of the pitch.

Jonah O'Reilly

During the first half the visitors probably had the better of play, which was taking place more in our own half. However, we went a goal ahead, courtesy of a penalty. There was some doubt about what it was for, but a consensus emerged for dangerous play by Brighouse's goalkeeper.

Phil Bannister scores from the spot

The weather was a bit cloudier for the second half, which assisted one of our spectators, Mike Bayly of When Saturday Comes, visiting for his book 100 British Football Grounds to Visit Before You Die, due to be published at the end of the year, who captured this picture of the main stand.

A new starter was Jacob Jones, on loan from Atherton Collieries.

Jacob Jones

We had the better of the second half. I did not capture Joe Evans' header from just in front of me (play can get too close for the 70mm minimum length of my lens), and he might have intended for someone to get on the end of it rather than for it to go in directly. Still, there is no requirement for intention when it comes to a goal.

Joe Evans

The visitors pulled a goal back late in the game by getting a free kick round our wall, but never looked like taking a point.

Loading the photos to the website was straightforward, if slightly annoying when you have wait for the photos to load before saving, which, on a standard broadband connection takes some time, as there is no tool to compress the files. Once they are online, the site displays them in a square format. Plenty of sites do this, but not generally in a square of the short side. You can click though to the full photos on a desktop or laptop, but not on a mobile, where they remain resolutely square - Marcus Burgess flagged up to me that even downloading, he looked like this.

Here is the picture as it should be.

I posted the link to the club website first to push traffic towards the site - and our sponsors - but still linked to the Google+ collection later for a mobile friendly display, with better resolution for downloads.

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

Final score: Prescot Cables 2 (Bannister pen, Evans) Brighouse Town 1.

Feather behaviour

With Prescot Cables' game away to Ossett Albion at the weekend postponed, and heavy rain overnight taking out a few local games, I continued my practice over the last few weeks: if you cannot visit Yorkshire, the next best thing is for Yorkshire to visit you, with Burscough entertaining Farsley Celtic. As Prescot are due to play there next week, I could have conducted a scouting mission, but that would require a modicum of football knowledge, rather than just how to take pictures of it.

Burscough has a L40 postcode, the club are members of the Liverpool County FA, being just within the requisite 18 miles from Liverpool Town Hall, and many people have moved there from the city. However, on the bus from Ormskirk, the conversation between driver and passengers yielded the accents of deepest Lancashire. As I got on, discussion revolved around names for what I thought was a baby. The suggestion of Izzy, as in "is he male or female?" seemed an alarming way to refer to a child. My mind was put at rest when further details made it apparent the driver, by now talking to himself, was discussing a newly hatched budgerigar, and amused himself by settling on the not entirely original name of Budgie.

I lost a few pounds to a bug at the beginning of last month, and have kept a couple off, which came in handy at the unfeasibly narrow turnstiles. Once inside, I took up a fairly neutral position, slightly into the half Burscough were attacking. The sky was grey but not dark, so the light could best be described as flat, which sports were made for, as the action makes up for the lack of light and shadow effects.

I had not previously noticed a slight slope on the pitch away from the village end. In sports work, it is an advantage for still photography to have a low position in relation to the action, although it only seemed to have a particular effect along the touchline.

For the second half, I moved to the other side of the half way line staying with the hosts' attack (in a Lancashire v Yorkshire fixture, one has to take sides, however discreetly). I was nonetheless fairly neutral as to where I was pointing my lens, and in the pictures I selected to edit and show.

The game finished goalless. We all know there are 0-0 draws and 0-0 draws, and this was one between two sides strong in both attack and defence. The announcer at the end of the game said, to general agreement, that it was one of the best 0-0 draws we had seen in a while.

On the return, the bus looked not to be as handy as on the outward journey, leaving a couple of minutes before the end of the game. However, that view would ignore the excellent Hop Vine, and the opportunity for a pint of Peerless Knee Buckler IPA before catching the next one.

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

Final score: Burscough 0 Farsley Celtic 0.

Weather of two halves

We were fortunate having a few dry days before Prescot Cables' home game against Mossley, although conditions were unlikely to be anything other than soft.

Before the match we observed a minute's applause for Linda Scott, who looked after the boardroom and match officials' hospitality for some years, and who died a couple of weeks ago after a short illness. The hospitality work is often not seen by the supporters, but it is important for maintaining good relations with other clubs, the League and County FA, and tributes from other clubs in particular illustrated how well Linda carried it out.

At the start of play, the sun was low in the sky, so the players were moving in and out of shadow, a situation for which auto exposure was invented. I do not think a lot about numbers in photography, you can expend so much effort remembering them you forget the picture. For most settings I just remember directions: faster shutter speeds for better freezing of action; higher ISO for more sensitivity, paid for by more grain. However, the first half repays some technical observation. We started off with a positively summery 1/1600s, f/5.6 at ISO 400.

James Edgar

Looking into the shadow of the stand, there is less light available, giving us 1/500s, f/5.3 at ISO 1600.

Andy Scarisbrick

The automatic settings are very responsive, here is Sam Staunton Turner at 1/500s, f/5.6, ISO 1000.

Two seconds later, Sam has moved a couple of yards into more light, so the speed has increased to 1/800s, still at f/5.6 and the sensitivity decreased to ISO 800.

Amidst this technical information, I noticed there were half a dozen new advertising boards, all good revenue for the club. We are keen that you do not let your kids grow up thinking football is a television programme, but when the football is not on and you want to watch television, one of our sponsors will be able to sort out your reception.

Andy Nugent

Emerging after half time, the weather was a bit different.

Joe Herbert and Antony Shinks

I stayed under the stand for the first few minutes, and caught up with Ben Morrow, on loan to Widnes, whose game at Eccleshall had been postponed due to a band of rain further inland. Ben was feeling the cold in a decent coat with a furry hood. His father pointed out there are advantages of not playing in this weather.

Marcus Burgess

Once the worst of the hail had cleared, I went to the gasworks side. The wind was permeating my running gloves, and the shutter release on this camera does not seem as forgiving of slightly angled pressure as my previous one. In the end I had to take my glove off to ensure a fully downward pressure, completing the loss of sensation in my fingers.

We finished the game with eight men after a chaotic last ten minutes. Rob Doran was sent off after becoming involved in a melée, so we will miss him for at least three games in a couple of weeks. Then Charlie Duke was stretchered off after we had used all our substitutes, and having only come on himself a few minutes previously. Finally, Danny Flood, who had also come on from the bench, was chasing a ball with Mossley's Dougie Carroll when they ended up in a heap with Danny coming off worse.

With all this, and Mossley scoring a goal in each half to take the points, there was only one thing to do afterwards, namely warm myself in front of the coal fire in the Sun.

Photo by Steve Heninghem, crop by me

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

Final score: Prescot Cables 0 Mossley 2.

'Appen us do like to be beside t'seaside

When Prescot Cables' fixtures were released, one point that jumped out was three trips to Yorkshire in January, including to Scarborough Athletic, playing at Bridlington Town. This fixture turned out to be useful with the weather, as the pitch, sitting, as the British Geological Survey tells us, on superficial deposits of sand with a white chalk bedrock, drains very well. Scarborough and Bridlington have largely escaped the postponements that have affected the rest of us.

I have never been a great fan of bucket and spade holidays, especially not in January, but a few of the Train Crew stayed over for a night or two, booking early to pay for the hotel with savings on the fare. I decided to wait to be sure the game was on, settling on a day trip. I met Dr James as he headed for the Liverpool to Scarborough train, and explained I would take the fast train to Leeds, buy a separate ticket and join him there, saving £15. I inspected the southern entrance to Leeds Station, whose pristine appearance and smell of fresh paint indicated it was recently opened, and which brings three or four Good Beer Guide pubs five minutes closer to the train.

In Bridlington we adjourned to the Telegraph, where I enjoyed an Anglers Reward from the Wold Top Brewery, making up in taste for what it lacked in punctuation. You cannot beat water filtered through chalk for making beer. We were concerned about the time to get to the ground, but we looked around and realised from the attire of the other customers that they were mainly the home support, and we just needed to leave when they did.

We were missing a couple of players. Team captain James McCulloch is likely to be out of action for some time due to ligament damage sustained in training. Marcus Burgess was suspended, replaced by new signing Tom Brocklehurst, returning to playing, having most recently been with Skelmersdale United.

Tom Brocklehurst

Andy Nugent also made a first appearance.

The hosts had an early chance, but we opened the scoring from a free kick by Rob Doran. We thought at the time this was from 25 yards, although looking at Scarborough's video and my pictures, it was some distance further than that. I was the wrong side to capture the kick very well...

... but I was perfectly placed to see the ball go into the net.

Returning from Skelmersdale United after a short spell with us earlier in the season, was Sam Staunton Turner, who wasted no time adding his name to the score sheet with a superb long range shot.

Sam shoots for goal ...

... and watches it go in.

With sunset in Yorkshire a quarter of an hour earlier than back at home, it was starting to get dark at the end of the first half. The floodlights came on for the second.

Our third goal came from another long range shot from Phil Bannister.

Phil shoots for goal ...

... and Richie updates the Twitter feed

A feature of these trips is meeting the locals. Leaving the ground, the rest of our party were some distance ahead. From around the corner I heard some sort of commotion. A local lady had asked the score, and on hearing that we won, loudly and colourfully expressed her satisfaction as a Bridlington supporter who had little time for Scarborough.

Back in Scarborough, the rest of the party headed for what by all accounts was an enjoyable evening, with some after effects in the morning, whilst I went for the train home. The journey is always improved by a win, although I have yet to find the scoreline that improves the comfort of TransPennine's buttock-numbingly firm seats.

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

Final score: Scarborough Athletic 0 Prescot Cables 3 (Doran, Staunton Turner, Bannister).

Let the camera do the work

Last Saturday saw another rain related postponement for Prescot Cables, with our chairman reporting the surface water was the worst in 15 years with other games having similar problems. By lunchtime the choice was down to football at Burscough or rugby union at Waterloo. I chose the rugby, as it was easier to get to, the game was less likely to be abandoned, and Birkenhead Park, who have used my pictures, were the visitors. There had been no games for a couple of weeks, so the grass looked rested.

I have posted before about saving files in jpeg and raw. The difference is camera dependent, particularly in the internal processing to create a jpeg. Despite having new kit, I will not revisit the question for non sports photography, the advantages of raw outweigh the disadvantages. However for sports work, it is more finely balanced. The extra processing for raw files on the computer takes time - about 45 seconds per photo, an hour and a half for 120. The D5300 introduces a new issue: even with a high speed SDHC card (80MB/s), the size of the file, about 25MB, is enough to cause an issue with buffering with exposures in quick succession, enough to get a run, but not the goal at the end of it.

"Test the application" is a watchword of these pages, so I decided to shoot entirely in jpeg, to compare results from previous games. I started with the sports mode, on the auto ISO setting. The colours lacked saturation, which had as much to do with the teams' colours as anything else, and was easily sorted with a tweak in Photoshop.

The home side made a strong start.

The auto ISO setting, with its maximum of 3200 lasted me for most of the first half, after which I worked up the scale, to 6400...

... to 12800.

Noise levels were better than the equivalent on the D5000 (where such existed), on a par with what I could obtain on the computer. For the last few minutes, as floodlights were unavailable, I went to 25600, where the full range of noise reduction is not available. There was a lot of grain, which I would have been able to reduce on a raw image.

Switching sports has moments when you forget what is going on - at one point I was thinking, "He's just run the full width of the pitch to join in that pushing and shoving", before remembering it was a maul, and joining it was the idea.

The visitors played more strongly in the second half, clawing back some points, but not enough to prevent a home win.

The game finished just before the next wave of rain arrived, an advantage on this occasion of the kick off time: Paul from our Train Crew went to Burscough and reported a good game in atrocious conditions.

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

Final score: Firwood Waterloo 36 Birkenhead Park 21.

Farsley - for a family day out

I planned to catch the 1022 to Prescot Cables' game at Farsley Celtic, but as soon as I woke up I thought this might not be a good idea. I was suffering from the after effects of a bug I picked up over Christmas. So, I was relieved when my travelling companions decided not to go for the drinks we had planned in Leeds, and I could have an extra hour in bed before catching the team coach. When I arrived, informal segregation was in place, with the players looking bright eyed and bushy tailed on one side of the street, and the travelling spectators looking slightly less so on the other.

The coach was a little delayed, as most of the vehicles had been out of use for a couple of weeks, and had trouble starting. I was half expecting the game to be called off, although Farsley's pitch drains well, and the area seemed less affected by rain than at home. There was a sign on the motorway warning of fog patches: it seemed a rather large patch, roughly the size of Yorkshire.

I was pleasantly surprised to be joined at the game by Dr Luke and his parents. Luke was returning to work in Nijmegen the following day, so Farsley seemed a good family day out (I know his father enjoys his football, something Luke only picked up when he started to watch Cables, so it made sense). I was starting to wonder how wise I had been leaving the house, as I did not even feel up to one of Growlers' pies.

We were playing towards the uncovered end, so, following events a couple of weeks ago, I made particular checks on my cover, and took up position level with the edge of the penalty area, near a floodlight pylon. I was definitely under the weather, and knew I was not going to keep up with adjusting my settings every few minutes, so I used the sports mode at ISO 6400 for the first half.

Charlie Duke makes his first start

I still did not get nearly as many frames as usual. We had held our own against a team on a good run of form, and the game was goalless at half time.

The home goalkeeper denies Darryl Patton

For the second half, I sat in the stand, which gives a decent view, and, with the tea bar, toilets, etc being the same side as the covered standing, not much foot traffic in front. I notched my ISO up to 12800, which served for most of the half, only needing to go up to 16000 in the last ten minutes or so.

Lloyd Dean

I do not generally attribute match losing decisions to the officials: what the players do is far more decisive, even when decisions go against you. However, the referee put the game out of our reach when he dismissed Marcus Burgess. My view of the foul was blocked by other players, but I saw the ball cross the line directly afterwards. I also only heard the whistle, but taking into account the speed of sound (worth a quarter of a second to where I was sitting), I am sure the referee blew it after the ball went in the goal. That would be consistent with his performance all afternoon, with free kicks frequently given after the ball had been played three or four times after the original foul.

On the basis of play being stopped by the whistle rather than the referee thinking about it, Farsley's goal should have stood, as the ball was in play when it went in. We would have been 1-0 down with a full team to try and get a goal back. As it was, the goal was disallowed. James Edgar went in goal, giving a creditable performance, but conceding the resultant penalty and two goals in quick succession at about 80 minutes meant the hosts continued their current good run of form.

James Edgar

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

Final score: Farsley Celtic 3 Prescot Cables 0.