I was taking a shot of the dog, when the guy turned around as well to finish it off. Yes, the 2025-26 football season — at least, some its ‘pre-season friendly stage’ — is up and running…
Two minutes to go before kick-off and someone, somewhere lets off a flare to add to the atmosphere. The two guys in the centre look pretty tense about it all. And considering their team are about to concede three soft goals in the first 12 minutes of the game that is to come, they were justified — not that they knew that at this point. Final score, Oldham Athletic 4, Halifax Town 0. This lot all go home now and wait for next season.
I pick this one today because I think it’s a nice portrait, though I don’t know these gentlemen and so can’t be sure it captures some kind of essential quality about them. But I see a lot of football these days — the game mentioned in the post title was my 80th of the season and I intend to do a few more yet before it’s over — and I see a lot of people like these, as we’re all in it together.
A double-bill to fill out the weekend, because I saw a lot of football, and not much else. This one is taken about half an hour before kick-off at the second match of the weekend, at Rhyl FC, where the Wales Under-19 team were playing Portugal in front of quite a big crowd, at least for the size of the ground. (A seagull crashes the shot for the second day in a row.) They were to see defeat, however: Portugal won 1-0.
Please don’t ask which one of these people is Ally. Although I admit it took me a while to get the point of the identity (Ally = Allerton = Northallerton Town FC). Yes, I am aggrieved by the green bin, but it is what it is.
After the interest and congeniality of Padiham the day before, Salford City v Morecambe, my last football match of 2024 was one of the worst of the lot, a truly dire game in a characterless metal box. The general demeanour of this gentleman, captured at half-time, sums it up. Time to move on — though for Morecambe this movement increasingly looks like it will be downward again, and back out of the League at some point in the spring. Perhaps I’m wrong, but you didn’t see them play today.
Both the weekend’s photos are from the football; two contrasting experiences. Here, the positive one at Padiham FC, an enjoyable game in a congenial stadium, one with character and distinctiveness. This mural has been painted since we last visited here two years ago, and, I think, its effectiveness can be judged by the fact that you do have to look twice to realise Joe, in his dark coat and grey woolly hat, is not actually part of it.
Attempts to create a new tradition by running a bunch of tractors and trucks, decorated in lights, through the centre of Hebden Bridge on 24th December were greeted by this photographer as an opportunity to depict something different on the 14th Christmas Eve to grace these virtual pages. Did he (I) really see the point, though? Well, not really. But it did draw a reasonably sized crowd.
This afternoon I saw L S Lowry’s famous painting, Going to the Match, which is currently on display in Bury Art Gallery. Then I went to Bury FC’s ground, Gigg Lane, where 2,790 people decided they wanted to Go to the Match. For a ninth-division game, this is pretty good, and I think Lowry might have approved.
The younger members of the small crowd at AFC Bentley v AFC Phoenix disport themselves in an aesthetically pleasing manner over the little main stand. It would have been very easy for this one to have been cluttered up by a number of things — signs on the back wall, or dangling wires, maybe — but other than at the bottom right corner, these things are not present (and I did consider cropping further, but then the standing couple would have been too near the edge). I doubt any of them particularly cared that the visiting team won on the day, they were just enjoying the sunshine, as was I.
Being 42 