I look back at the first home game of the season and on using my Nikon f100 film camera.
I hope everyone is safe and well.
The first view of the stadium as we come off the Greenway along with the sound of the chants and singing really lifts the hair on the back of your neck.
First of all, a huge apology for the lateness of this post. I have just returned back from a two week holiday in Scotland with the family, I missed the City game by quite a few hours as we drove wearily into London after a day spent travelling back from our adventures in the Highlands.
Outside the stadium, Nigel Kahn handing out the leaflets regarding the ticket price increase and removal of concessionary rates for children and older fans.
Also, apologies for not being as prepared as I’d like to have been for the start of the new season. I made the decision to use one of my film cameras – a Nikon f100 – for the Villa match and hadn’t had the chance to give it a proper spin before the game itself. Nothing like flying by the seat of your pants, eh?
Fans mingling outside the stadium and lining up for the security checks
It’s not that I haven’t used it, it’s just that I had to have it repaired after the batteries leaked as the camera was stored away in a box for a couple of years when we moved several times after our urgent decant from the flat. I decided to keep the images in colour instead of editing to monochrome, as I think they have a really nice dated feel about the colour. Except for the first two images that come from a monochrome film that was still in the camera.
Young fans playing football on the concourse around the stadium
Part of my decision to use it for this match was that we were going to be away and I thought I could send the films in the post for development and get digital downloads that I could then quickly edit whilst away and post up on here. The best laid plans of mice and men, if only the mice could understand the relationship between ISO, aperture and shutter speed when taking their photos, eh?
A young fan trying to catch the bubbles floating above his head
Also, little did I know that the process would take a week – apparently the labs that I sent the films to for processing were struggling to cover for staff who had gone away on holiday – how dare people go away when I needed my films done asap! Didn’t they know I had a blog post to publish? Aaargh!
Fans walking around the stadium, grabbing some food and drink before the game
Plus, where we stayed – in a lovely caravan site just outside a beautiful village called Callander, there was no WiFi and despite my best efforts, I could not download the photos for the blog post! It was stressing me out and I was supposed to be enjoying a holiday with the family. In the end I gave up! Now I am back home and the photos have finally been downloaded and my post is up – two weeks later than planned.
I seem to be suffering from discombobulation across all areas of my life as well and how we managed to get ourselves up to sunny (translate that as cold and wet) Scotland and in our hired caravan and doing some exciting activities I’ll never know given that we left all preparation and packing until the very last minute. At least we didn’t lock ourselves out of the house – something we have done before and meant we got mugged by a locksmith that same night as well. A lesson well learnt there for sure. I’m sure I could drill someone’s lock out of their front door and replace it with another in 10mins and charge a small fortune for my time and apparent skill!
Inside the stadium looking across the pitch
Anyway, Julen’s preparations have also been very last minute in respect of bedding in new players into the team, including some final transfer day movements in and out, which is quite rightly going through a serious transition and rebuild. Something we have needed for a while to give ourselves any chance of trying to stay within a throw in distance of the top six teams. As part of that rebuild we have invested in some quality players and also have some very exciting players coming through the academy who have gone out on loan this season. Are we finally seeing the dawn of a new and exciting era at the dome? Only time will tell, but it seems at least for the start of the season, some of our new recruits are having to play catch-up after missing a full pre season with their team mates.
Looking up at the stadium as fans settled into their seats
It has been a difficult start to the season with this tough game against Villa, as well as the frustrating loss to Man City – Haarland is the only reason my Fantasy Team is earning me any points! But these results sandwich a great win against Palace to at least give us 3 points on the board.
Well, to the match itself and my plan to use my film camera for this game. I kept checking the back of the camera after each shot and stared horrified at the grey back of the camera body! Did I get a decent shot just then? What did I actually photograph? It was a bit stressful to be honest. But something I’m going to get used to. I kept count of how many photos I had left as I was trying to decide how many I could commit to taking before the game. What if I ran out of photos by half time? What if I missed all the action? Should I use my iPhone? (The answer to that was no – I decided that would be cheating)
Players coming onto the pitch before the start of the match
There was a lot of atmosphere and expectation in the crowd before the match and it was emotional hearing the chants and songs as we walked up to the stadium itself. This was totally different from the Betway Cup and I felt a sense of relief that the season had started at last. To be honest, although I had us down from a 2-1 victory with Bowen and Kudus to score with Duran scoring for the Villains, I’d had been happy with a draw and to be fair, that fact we lost – to a Duran winner (we all knew it as soon as he came on) is not the end of the world. HH and Goaty have covered the various ins and outs of our performance, I just wanted to see some change in how we have played last season, some progress, however small and there was.
Fans clap as players return to the pitch for the second half
Kudus – such an amazing player and I’m looking forward to capturing his wizardry this season with the digital camera where I can take hundreds of shots of his twists, turns, tricks and just shear desire to get up and make something happen rather than stay on the floor hands held high trying to get a free kick from a position of advantage. Compare that to the Villains and their villainous behaviour of dropping to the floor when pressed by our team – or even when given a determined glance from the fan in row z- just to waste more time.
Talk about time wasting – Villa’s keeper Martinez is my least favourite player for quite some time. His endless time wasting was allowed again and again by the referee. Why can’t ref’s stamp down on this? Apparently there are trials in the lower leagues of giving the keeper 8 seconds to kick the ball, with the ref tapping his phone as a warning, then getting closer to the keeper and a final warning before then awarding the opposition a corner kick.
Fullkrug comes on, bringing hope of a goal
Tony Harrington got his pants pulled down time and again from the Villa players wasting time and breaking up the flow of play when we showed some momentum. It could just be my obvious bias here, but it boils the blood when you see yet another opposition player drop like a stone as if they have suffered a career ending injury only to skip up and carrying on playing! Kudus for me as an example of how to play the game. But something needs to be done as such practised play acting is having a negative impact on the game.
Fans react to another missed opportunity for West Ham to score
One thing that I particularly noticed was when Villa had the ball, their player on the ball was allowed space to progress, with team mates either side, and instead of us pressing the opposition, we allowed them time on the ball and their team mates either side of them also had space to receive the ball. Why didn’t we press and snuff out the chance of a clear pass, forcing errors and then regaining possession to make our own counter attack? Time and again this happened. It felt like last season at times but then most of the players on the pitch, especially for the first half, were those from last season.
Fans jump up and shot for a penalty for the foul on Tomas Soucek
Paqueta scores from the penalty spot
At 1-1 after Paquetá’s penalty, we looked good for a draw, but I felt the heart of our good play was taken out of the team with Julen’s first three substitutions. After then we struggled and as stated, with Duran on the pitch for Villa, it was inevitable we would lose. But we could have lost by 3 or 4 to be fair.
Dave being interviewed by Nick Hawkins from West Ham Fan TV
I got a chance to say hi to Nick Hawkins from West Ham Fan TV and explain Lids idea of having photos of fans talking about how the clubs decision to remove concessions for younger and older fans and how increased ticket prices will impact them. I spoke to Dave, a fan who was interviewed by Nick, and he made two very good points. One – we should be going after the club sponsors to make them uncomfortable about sponsoring the club. Two – the financial benefits of this harsh price rise and removal of concessions will not be felt by the club now, so their argument about keeping up with the Premier League Jone’s again doesn’t hold under scrutiny.
Fans holding one of the black balloons that floated above the heads of fans in the stands
I got to photograph some fans holding the black balloons that were released during the game – it’s a shame there weren’t a lot more of these – hundreds would have had a visual and media impact for sure and that is the kind of thing we need to do during the matches. It’s the kind of attention that the owners, and the clubs sponsors, would not want to have.
Fans enjoying a drink and food after the match
It was a disappointing result for sure, as we all want the team to win, but there were some shoots of the new West Ham – Summerville was lively and you could see what a difference he will make to the team. Rodriguez had a solid first game and you can see which players are going to make way for the new signings. Soucek and Coufal have been awesome for West Ham over the years, but we need a refresh and in the next few weeks we will hopefully get to see the first team look quite different and beginning to get the results we need.
Fans taking photos outside of the ground
Patience is needed, and I hope readers will forgive me posting this so late after the game. I need to be patient with using film now knowing how long it takes to get the images back from the lab. Forward planning as well – choosing when to use film instead of digital. It’s like being a new manager with lots of new players to choose from! Well, not quite.
Thank you for reading.
Dawud
From the Stands 