Can The FA Cup Survive

Its been the weekend of having a go at the FA Cup again, it started with Paul Lambert and “Its not a priority” moved onto Michael Laudrup and the “Lets get rid of replays “ and ended with Sam Allardyce and his “I had no choice but to rest 9 players”

Add in the rather poor attendances at many games, who wants to pay full price in these austere times to watch the reserves or the youth team ,a and it looks yet again that the FA Cup will in time suffer "Death By A Thousand Cuts"

So for those of us who have always and will always love the old competition what can be done to save it, the EPL have no interest in it, managers at many levels seem to think survival in the league is more important and the supporters can’t be arsed because they have limited resources to spend on watching football.

To be honest I’m not really sure, maybe if a big sponsor threw more money at it because money seems to be the be all and end all of the game now, if the FA promoted it more and maybe even returned certain things to their traditional states, the draw on a Monday lunchtime rather than before some matches have even kicked off might make it stand out from all the televised periphery of the game now.

There is no easy answer all I know is that if that if the old trophy is allowed to die without at least putting up a fight  the future when football is all about survival in order to rake in more money rather than glory as it was in my youth will be a very sad and dour place

Mangotsfield Utd 2 Fleet Town 0 Calor League South And West Div 1 (28.12.2013)

A family trip down to Devon over Christmas meant that I was never going to get back in time for AFC Wulfrunians match on the Saturday, so a post on the Non League Of Extraordinary Photographers Facebook group asking for reccommendations let to Peter Coddington inviting me to watch his Mangotsfield Utd side in the Calor League 9Step 4 in the Non League Pyramid)


Mangotsfield is easily reached being only a few minutes off the M4/M32 so despite a couple of delays due to accidents on the way up I was at the rather unromantically named Glass Consultants UK Stadium in plenty of time.Despite the name its a very pleasant well laid out stadium well maintained and with none of the signs of neglect you find at a number of grounds in the pyramid

My usual plan and a bit of an NLOEP group tradition of getting a shot of those unsung heroines of the the game,the tea ladies,was abandons as Peter advised that they are camera shy to the nth degree so all I got was a quick shot of the tea bar.

Mangotsfield are lucky to have in one section of the ground a small but extremely vociferous group of fans that helps (In a similar way to Gornal Athletics Shed Enders) give a different atmosphere to the ground and they maintained their vocal support for the entire 90 minutes.

Oh yes almost forgot the reason I was there,Peter Coddington club photographer and seriously nice bloke so here he is,in one shot taking the instruction "Strike the Pose" to a new level

And so to the match well despite the fact that we were talking top 3 v bottom 3 the match was very even throughout with Fleet putting up an excellent performance against their much higher ranked hosts and having more than 1 chance of taking the lead .
Mangotsfuield took the lead on the stroke of half time but sadly I was at the other end of the pitch looking for some artistic wide angle shots at the time so this was all i got just before the goal,I did get the hard core supporters celebrating though

The second half continued in much the same way as the first with Fleet still keeping the home team on their toes and it was well into the second half  before Mangotsfield made the game safe with an excellent individual goal that this time I got a piece of

So a very pleasant day with a friendly club and as Mangotsfield play a couple of Midlands teams hopefully I will meet up with them again

AFC Liverpool 2 West Didsbury 2 North West Counties League (06.11.2013)

So still staying over in Liverpool and the night after photographing Albert Docks I was back on the more familiar ground of Non League football with a trip to watch AFC Liverpool host West Didsbury,AFC were founded not as a protest club like FC United of Manchester but as a home for Liverpool fans who were finding the price of modern football to much,footy for a fiver was how press officer Alan Harrison described it as.
So AFC don't have their own ground but share with their landlords Prescott Cables,the ground is one one of those faded but homely places that is one of the reasons so many of us follow non league

The downside of the night was the weather the incessant rain that lasted until about 10 minutes from the end of the match but to the great credit of the players it didn't stop them putting on a highly entertaining match

 From the start of the game AFC as per their higher league position were the more dominant side but it took a while before their dominance paid off and they took a 1-0 lead,by some miracle your photographer actually got a shot of the goal and the celebrations

I was actually not the only visual media there as AFC sport like my own club AFC Wulfrunians a photographer and videographer,quite a rarity in non league football from my experience,both guys like everybody else at the club extremely friendly.

So  half time arrived with AFC only 1-0 up and I was invited into the board room for refreshments,told you these guys were friendly, and a very nice spread it was as well.

And so to the second half and AFC continued their dominance and doubled their lead with a quite superb strike from some 20 yards,I think at this point most of the crowd thought that was game set and match,it was actually the start of an amazing turnaround as within minutes West Didsbury had pulled a goal  back  with an even better strike from at least 30yards.This inspired the visitors who took almost total control and it was no surprise when they drew level from the penalty spot

After that although Didsbury posed the greater threat both sides could have claimed all three points but with honours even after 90 minutes West Didsbury were obviously the happier side

So despite the weather a very enjoyable evening and another fine example of the friendly family that is non league football

A Stroll Around Liverpool Docks with Graham

Staying up in Liverpool on business I was not far from my colleague Graham Seaman  and the initial plan was just to have a pint,however as it was a nice evening and Graham knows I never go anywhere without my camera so he suggested a night photography session.
The night didn't get off to a good start as the Anglican cathedral usually floodlit was in darkness as there was a film crew inside.so off down to the docks area.

Well I'm not a great night photographer but you really cant go wrong here because there were images demanding to be captured right from the start

Liverpool has a wheel as well as London

You also get attractive young Irish ladies who

forgot their cameras wanting you to take photographs of them,annoyingly so did their Partners.Brothers.fathers and Uncles

  Also by the wheel is a sculpture musically inspired and dedicated to John Lennon and it was crying out to be photographed

Moving around to the Albert docks you get more mundane objects that you would ignore from a photographic point of view in daylight but they take on a completely new identity in the artificial light of the night

Before ending the evening with the pint that was the original plan Graham insisted that photograph the 3 Graces ,that is The Royal Liver Building, The Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building, hopefully I have done credit to these beautiful structures that dominate the Liverpool waterfront

So a pint at the Pump House and the evening was over,well not quite,I still had to prove what every tourist knows only to well.there's always a bloody photographer getting in the way of what you want to photograph

First Look At the Toolstation Western League 9th October 2013

Sorry for the delay in posting a bit about my trip to Westbury v Bradford Town but its been a bit hectic recently.

Anyhow a whole week at my head office in Trowbridge gave me the chance to visit a ground and a league i'd not seen before,Westbury Utd were hosting league leaders and local rivals Bradford Town,I must say in my defence that due to the incompetence of the Tamron service department i have been missing my 70-200 f2.8 for 6 weeks and so was restricted to the Tamron 17-50 f2.8,not exactly a sports lens.

On a pleasant evening I and a couple of colleagues travelled down from Trowbridge,got slightly lost when a closed road confused the Sat Nav but parking right outside the ground was easy and we found a pleasant little ground awaiting us

 Although as I have said previously it was a very pleasant evening one of mu colleagues had forgotten her coat so despite being half my size she borrowed my rather unflattering coat

From the kick off Bradford showed their title credentials by dominating play and itb was no surprise when they took the lead after about 20 minutes,their players unlike my lads were generous enough to celebrate on my side of the pitch rather than running off into the distance as is my usual experience

As the game wore on Westbury had a few half chances but never really looked like drawing level and it was no surprise when soon after half time Bradford scored a second and really just ran down the clock to collect 3 well deserved points

A couple of amusing sights were firstly the cafe culture seating in front of the "Stand behind their goal and secondly the arrival  of the local cycling club to watch the second half from behind the goal

All in all a very pleasant evening at a welcoming club,i would say that Step 6 in this area is slightly below the standard of Step 6 in the West Midlands but it was an entertaining and pleasant evening

The Joys Of Transfer Deadline Day

So another transfer deadline day is over and Talk Sport and Sky Sports presenters can stop at least until the weekend shrieking in hysterical tones as if the transfer of Frederico  Bollango from Verona to Hull city was the greatest event n the planet since the birth of Christ.

If ever there was something that expresses the madness of modern football at the highest level it is the end of the Summer transfer window, dont get me wrong  have no problem with the window as a concept, at least it stops all the tapping up and tedious press speculation during the rest of the season but there are some major problems.

1) Why does it not end before the season starts to stop the panic buying at the end of August just because a team has not won their first 3 or 4 matches 10-0

2) How can major teams leave it so late to sort out vital staffing decisions that will affect their performance and success both sportingly and financially in the year to come, in the case of Manchester Utd,  Arsenal and Everton leaving it until the final few minutes. Surely they would have identified their needs soon after the end of last season and planned their feasible targets rather than going off on unachievable wild goose chases for the likes of Fabregas and Suarez.

This particular last day has of course highlighted the greatest obscenity of modern football that being the chasm between the haves and the have nots, on the day that Gareth Bale moved for gazillions Kettering Town went out of business for the amount of money Bale will earn every 36 hours, there has to something seriously wrong with a sport where that can happen.

And then back to where I started and the broadcast media hyping the whole day up to a ludicrous extent and often getting it wrong, this years gem was Stan Collymore on Talk Sport all but staking the life of his entire family on Romalu Lokaku going back to West Brom on loan (Don’t get me going on season long loans especially between EPL teams) ,sadly he was not on air when the Belgian signed on the dotted line for Everton.It must be time for radio and TV to employ qualified journalists rather than some footballer recently retired who can just about put a sentence together without going You Know

Getting People Through Those Non League Gates

I have just been reading an article in When Saturday Comes about the opportunity  Non League clubs in Coventry have to swell their attendances as disenfranchised Coventry City fans who don't want to travel to Northampton look for somewhere to go,its not however the likes of Coventry Sphinx who need to look to attract more fans of League clubs/

I would guess that the majority of fans of League clubs are homers,I certainly was years go when I followed Wolves, with the exception of Vila,Blues and Sandwell Town I never went away so every other week I had a free Saturday and many of those free Saturdays before I started playing were spent watching Dudley Town which was only 10 minutes walk from my front door.

So how do Non League clubs especially at the lower levels look to attract these "Homers", well fans at my own club AFC Wulfrunians have recently walked the streets of the locality doing a leaflet drop to try to attract fans and , I have seen on Twitter another MFA team Boldmere St Michaels  offering discounted entry to Villa season ticket holders for certain games,no doubt across the country there are many other clubs doing similar things Is there even a possibility that the "Big" clubs themselves do something to support lower level Non League by being approached to advertise in their programmed  about local non league clubs that their "Homers might like to go and watch?

So if we do manage to get new fans through the door how do we keep them, well without being arrogant I don't think that  will be a major problem,we have a good "product" with lots of competitive games and not a small amount of skill on display, in addition if my experience at many grounds across the country is anything to go buy new fans will be made very welcome.

So lets hope with inventive thinking we can get new fans through the gate even if they re only every other week because every bit of support and every penny counts