The football season comes to its many and diverse ends, each club finishing in different ways with different emotions. Raith Rovers of Scottish League One have managed to blow their hopes out in the last three games, promotion hopes have disappeared and at the final whistle today all was over. It was a very melancholy place all round — club, and town (Kirkcaldy in Fife). Maybe this picture captures something of that.
Welcome back to the Amex Stadium, Brighton, venue for several previous shots: all of which were preludes to victories by the mighty Brighton and Hove Albion. Today’s score versus Burnley: 0-0, so I lose my 100% win-only record there, but still, a point’s a point.
For a birthday present for father and nephew (both Manchester City fans) I got them tickets for tonight’s UEFA Champions League game versus Feyenoord at the Etihad stadium, and went along myself.
It was a stellar exhibition of football genius and entertainment, as befits the most exciting sports competition anywhere in the universe, played by Gods who walk the earth in human form. At least, that was the media narrative. Personally I thought it was a rather tedious game, played out by a bunch of uninterested guys who knew it was essentially meaningless and that they’d get their £250,000 each this week whatever the result. And you couldn’t even get a beer at half-time.
Molineux is the stadium of Wolverhampton Wanderers who became the latest side that the mighty Brighton & Hove Albion batted aside on their way to the Championship title this season. Well, OK… promotion at least. We’re not there yet but we could be, as early as Monday. I have given up trying to take decent action shots of games, which is impossible a) from the crowd b) with an everyday camera and c) when you care about the result. So here is one taken just before things got started with the 5pm kick off (thank you, Sky Sports). Of course it would be better if all the lines were straight, but as with other elements of sports photography — it really doesn’t help if you’re confined to one particular seat all evening.
Evening game at the John Smith’s stadium, Huddersfield — but let’s not talk about it past this point. Suffice to say that only here, when the teams were coming out, did we Brighton fans feel particularly optimistic.
A lack of cheap hotel rooms in the centre of London led to us staying last night in Stratford, on the doorstep of Olympic Park, venue for the 2012 Games. We went on a walk round there this morning. This counts as East rather than Central London, but is more than urban enough and, as is obvious from this picture, sees the occasional football fan now and again (though not this weekend).
When I first saw this cormorant perched on a post beside the unseen River Lea below, I genuinely thought it was a fake, put there as some vaguely cute piece of urban design when all this was built a few years ago. Then it moved. I wish I could have got a better photo of it — I had another one, a close-up, which made the wings look amazing but the head was out of focus and it didn’t locate it in this bizarre geographical context. I guess if birds like this can turn up in central London we may occasionally be doing something right with the environment.
I’ve given up trying to get any truly decent action shots at football matches, I can never do it. With this one I was trying for symmetry and to capture that mother-of-pearl sky. Decent day out today — except for the result. Well, I guess our unbeaten run had to come to an end at some point.
Watching a game in the sixth tier of English football — the National League North — might seem an unusual way to see in 2017, but Joe, me and 2,509 other people decided it was worth doing today; numbers which help explain the strength of the sport in this country. Halifax Town 2, Darlington 2 was the final score, a good game, quite exciting, though from listening to the home fans around Joe and I you’d think it had been a disaster of Iceland v England proportions. I worry that this shot is a bit messy, but I like the crescent moon visible to top left, so let’s give it a go. I prefer it to most pictures I get at football matches, anyway, even if it is slightly out-of-focus.
Whatever happens to football, and/or to my club, I hope I never lose the simple enjoyment of just going to a match, and that moment of excitement as you see the ground ahead; particularly for night matches when the floodlights pour illumination onto the as-yet-unseen pitch. I’ve posted before about how Ewood Park, Blackburn is a good, old-school ground (one of only three used in the first ever football league season in 1888 that is still used today — trivia fans may note that the other two have also appeared on this blog over the last five years); I like the terraced house which gets into this shot on the right.
That’s three seasons in a row that the ground’s appeared on here but if our clubs keep going in the direction they are doing, it won’t be on again for a while. Blackburn Rovers 2, Brighton & Hove Albion 3. We are top of the Championship tonight…. they are at the other end of the table.
After we visited Hampden Park last year I decided that at some point I wanted to see a match there. Football tourism, why not. Something different to do other than hang around at home on a Saturday. It is one of the world’s great football stadia and I’d never before seen a Scottish league game in my 47 years on this planet. Hampden is home to Queen’s Park FC, the oldest club in Scotland (150 years old in 2017), and the last remaining bastion of amateurism in senior British football. The crowd for their game with Brechin City was a few hundred strong, swelled by Joe and myself, and we saw the home team win 2-0 (despite Virgin Trains’ best efforts to screw up our day trip).
Being 42 