A Game of Two Halves

This month has seen me covering two football matches for 'When Saturday Comes' and the assignments demonstrate that the saying "the haves and the have-nots" is an apt description of our national sport.

First off I travelled to the picturesque spa town of Matlock, which nestles in the Peak District in Derbyshire. The occasion was a qualifying round match for this season's English FA Cup between Matlock Town and visitors Eastwood Town from near Nottingham. The visitors won by three goals, but I was much more interested in the setting for the tie, the atmosphere generated by a small but passionate crowd and the ambiance of a Saturday afternoon in one of football's charming backwaters.

In contrast, two Saturdays later I was at a match between two sides who have both won European cup competitions but now find themselves languishing in the second tier of English football.

Notwithstanding, nearly 23,000 spectators turned up to see a spirited performance by hosts Nottingham Forest, who overcame visitors Ipswich Town by two goals to nil. To add further spice to this encounter, Ipswich are manageed by former Forest legend Roy Keane. He left disappointed and annoyed by his team's performance. I enjoyed visiting one of the country's finest stadiums which has a cracking location on the banks of the Trent and where all the staff and supporters couldn't have been more friendly and helpful as I worked around them.

Both reportages will feature in the next issue of 'When Saturday Comes', which will be out at the start of November.

To see an edited selection from the two matches, please click on the following links:

http://colinmcpherson.photoshelter.com/gallery/Matlock-Town-Football-Club/G0000AaCT1c441A4/P0000csIFjZg0OLE

http://www.photoshelter.com/mem/gallery/gallery-show?G_ID=G00008LPoOrdfMpQ

Report from Indonesia

A dear friend and colleague, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert is working on assignment in Indonesia for Greenpeace. His report makes compulsory viewing for anyone who cares about our planet.

http://blog.jeremysuttonhibbert.com/2010/10/photographing-natural-forest-deforestation-sumatra-indonesi/

Sad News

The death has been announced of punk songstress Ari Up, lead singer of The Slits.

A sad day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Up

Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2010 has been awarded to the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa. In awarding the accolade, the Organising Committee noted that the award had been given to Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt, and defeat.”

I had the good fortune to photograph Mario Vargas Llosa at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2003. Llosa’s appearance at the world’s biggest literary festival coincided with the publication of his novel entitled ‘The Feast of the Goat.’

The Football Business

It's a strange country we live in when the second item on the main BBC News is the sale of a football club. But then it tells you much of the slavish devotion and obsession people have with professional sport in general, and football in particular, that it doesn't seem out-of-place at the top of the news agenda.

But maybe we shouldn't be calling it football, but 'soccer' as the sale of the troubled club - a global brand, as its often referred to - will be a transfer of ownership from one set of American businessmen to another. That is, only if the High Court in London agrees to the takeover.

It all kicks off tomorrow, October, 12, and you can be sure that the result will have greater significance and be more keenly anticipated than many of Liverpool FC's dire performances this season.

Here's an image I took on commission last week outside the club's Anfield stadium. As you can see, it's not just the stadium which is about to undergo a transformation, but the whole area adjacent to the famous old ground too.

Text and image © Colin McPherson, 2010
All Rights reserved

Welcome to my blog - or as it stands for Boring Load Of Gas. Does that sound cynical enough about blogging and the blogisphere, or does it merely describe me and what I've got to share? We'll see. We'll see how many people read and follow me, we'll see if anyone is interested enough to engage with what I have to say and we'll see if I have the staying power to blog when all else around me have given up.

We'll see......