The photographers gather just after half time at the end being attacked by Brighton & Hove Albion FC in tonight’s game versus Birmingham City: and they made the right choice, as barely a couple of minutes after I took this picture the Albion scored to go 2-1 up, and that’s how it stayed. St. Andrew’s becomes a new ground for me, pretty decent one too I thought, right result…
Thought I’d better do a photo of Glasgow today even though I saw nothing of it except the hotel, the room where we did the viva examination, and a restaurant for lunch. Still, the view from the second of these, being up on the 11th floor of a building at the University of Strathclyde, was a damn fine one and included this monumental structure (in both senses of the word). Celtic Park (aka Parkhead), home of Celtic FC, one of the best-supported football clubs in the world, towers above its surroundings and seems colossal even from two miles away. The ‘mist’ is, rather, steam from chimneys between it and where I stood.
Of all the genres of photography that I get the chance to try on this blog I think sports photography is the hardest. In part this is because I a) just don’t have the right equipment and b) when I am watching an event, at least one like this football match, I’m usually stuck in the same seat. This shot is OK, thanks mainly to the light, but it’s still not that great really because it has been cropped hugely, so has come out grainy. Brighton & Hove Albion hit this free kick towards the goal of their hosts, Preston North End, but nothing came of it — which was the story of the match as a whole, it finished 0-0.
David Stockdale, Brighton & Hove Albion’s goalkeeper, ponders today why he has a job that requires him to work outside on a day like this. But then again he’s quite handsomely paid for it. And, at least at one level, earned his money today, keeping a clean sheet as the Albion won 1-0 in the Blackburn snow. Snow has definitely been a key theme of this weekend.
Oh go on. I know it’s a cheat, but indulge me this once. Who knows, it might not happen again.
The Campaign for Real Football might not have approved of Sky moving the kick-off of this weekend’s big game in the Championship to a Sunday lunchtime, but they could never complain about Turf Moor, Burnley. This has got to be one of the most unreconstructed pieces of Northern England remaining in existence, surely.
It’s Joe’s half-term, so to occupy him (and also mark Clare’s birthday) we went to the National Football Museum in Manchester. This is part of the new “From Pitch to Pixel” exhibition, head that bright orange ball and become part of some giant interactive artwork being compiled over several months, called “Hit It!”. And become part of my rather longer-lasting interactive artwork too….
Joe and I made one of our occasional trips to the Shay today to see Halifax v. Woking. Had never previously seen Halifax lose a match in 12 games spread over the last 18 years or so, but today they lived up to their league position and were comprehensively stuffed 3-0. Hence, the title of this post is somewhat ironic. Perhaps they would have done better had the furry bloke at the back been on from the start.
The city of Wolverhampton makes its debut on the blog, and indeed in my life (with my never having been here before in my 46 and a bit years) but this shot could really be anywhere. Brighton and Wolves fans make their way to the pleasingly central Molineux to watch what turned out to be a 0-0 draw that probably we should have won, but I’m biased, as of course is everyone else.
Hampden Park is Scotland’s national football stadium and also home of Queen’s Park FC, currently in the fourth tier of Scottish football, a bizarre but strangely endearing arrangement surely not replicated elsewhere in world football. The stadium has been on this site since 1903 and when it was substantially rebuilt in the 1990s this old version of one dressing room was preserved as part of the Scottish Football Museum. In this room, more or less, Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt prepared before the 1960 European Cup Final, often cited as one of the best games of football ever played (7-3 to Real).
Being 42 