The orange-and-black colour scheme illustrates that we spent the afternoon at Tannadice Park, home of Dundee United FC — whose record against Barcelona is played four, won four, by the way. Labouring somewhat against Inverness Caledonian Thistle (it was 1-1) did not seem to please the locals particularly. At least the sun was shining. Meanwhile, I noticed the cranes of the shipyard behind and decided to see what I could do with the camera.
I’m still working, and didn’t leave the house today until after dark, so the choice of picture was, as much as anything else, governed by when and where my rather inadequate camera coped best with the murk and gloom. With some help given by the lights of the stadium ahead, this one won. That does make it two car parks in a row, but hey.
Football matches are finishing later and later, now this whole ‘add on every second that players spend rolling around on the floor’ thing has kicked in. Rochdale v Chesterfield is still going on behind me at this point, even at 10pm, but I had to leave before the end to catch the train. Anyway, all of this is irrelevant to what I think is quite a pleasing shot of the moon riding on its little cloud.
One to add to the ‘superlatives’ at the bottom of the stats page, the next time I update it. Hallam FC have been around, as the stand says, since 1860, and have always played here, at Sandygate, in the west of Sheffield. According to the Guinness Book of Records, this makes this place the oldest football ground in the world. Hallam are the second-oldest club, after Sheffield FC: I guess it made sense to start no. 2 fairly near to no. 1, after all, they needed someone to play. (What the third-oldest club — Cray Wanderers, from Kent — did at first with their playing time is not as yet recorded.)
In the 1940s The Valley stadium in south-east London could seat 70,000 people and was one of the biggest football grounds in the country. It doesn’t quite have that same scale any more but it’s still a decent football stadium: if you can find the entrance to the away end, anyway. At least the extended trek that was required to gain access allowed the opportunity of this shot, the only point from which the city behind could properly be seen. And the steward, doing his thing.
This afternoon I paid a first-ever visit to the town of Pontefract, which has a significant amount of history, as is first of all indicated by its name of almost pure Latin — pontus fractus means ‘broken bridge’. Its castle was once the second-largest in the country and in its dungeon, King Richard II was starved to death in 1400.
But while I did take pictures of some of this history, in the end I am going with the surreal sight of these mannequin’s legs at the local footie ground. The absurdity of life and its trivia, and all that.
Saturday afternoon at Widnes FC, who attracted just 77 fans, officially, to the large stadium that normally houses the rugby league team. Even for a rugby-favouring town, that’s a rather pathetic crowd. I was one of them, but this was one of those games I could have done without; maybe the choice of shot is intended to convey this feeling.
I try not to overload this blog with football pictures but nevertheless this was the best one of the day, spent on my first proper visit to the border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which feels neither English nor Scottish, and is all the more interesting for that. Not a day of great photography light, but that’s my only complaint, and the ground of Berwick Rangers FC was a fascinating relic with its speedway track and paraphernalia, and then those grey towers behind — a maltings, apparently. The ball is on its way in for my first witnessed goal of the season.
No apologies today for adding the second football-related celebration of the weekend. At the start of this ravaged season — just one aspect of our emptied recent lives — there were many reasons to not anticipate that it would end at Wembley stadium, but here we are. The final whistle has just gone and those fans of Morecambe FC that were permitted to enter, as part of an attendance of 9,083, still greatly below the capacity of this fine ground, celebrate the 1-0 win (with thanks to an admittedly outrageous penalty) over Newport County that takes them up to the third level of English football for the first time in their history. And thanks to Clare (who was also present, of course) — I could be there. A poor game, yes, but a great day out.
And this is also the 100th London pic to appear on the blog, meaning the capital turns up about once every five weeks, on average.
Another shot of water caught by sunlight, but here the water is not being naturally produced. Half-time at the City Academy stadium in Manchester, where the under-23 team of the Richest Club in the World were to happily get their comeuppance, slipping to a 1-0 home defeat to Brighton’s under-23s. Which of course I found highly entertaining.
Being 42 