Wembley Dreams

Yesterday took me to Wembley for the long awaited return of Scotland who took on England in an international friendly. Well, it was termed a friendly but it got pretty spicy pretty quickly. I had expected a rather dull affair with players not wanting to risk injury at the start of the season, but instead we got a feisty affair with 5 goals.I got there decently early and met up with fellow Focus snapper Jimmy Rainford, got my accreditation and out onto the pitch to book my spot. Having figured out which end England should attack in the first half I elected to park myself in Lazy Man's Corner next to the pitch entrance whilst Jimmy went to the other end.Immediately things started to go downhill. Wembley has pitchside high speed internet via LAN cables. There are junction boxes dotted about behind the advertising boards and boxes of cables. So far so good. Having a skinny lightweight laptop without a standard LAN port, numbnuts here had forgotten his LAN adapter. Aaaaggghh! That meant I'd have to rely on stadium wifi or an unreliable mobile data signal to get pictures away. Stupid mistake which I put down to total incompetence and not thinking ahead. It's also due to me swapping bags and not having my standard match gear in the correct place.Then it started raining. Rain severely curtails attempts to get pictures out live, even when working with the laptop in a waterproof cover (ie plastic freezer bag). The rain went on and off all evening, though thankfully it was warmish so not too unpleasant.Anyhow, moving onto to the actual game. Blow me if Scotland didn't score first! That wasn't in the script. The massive Scottish crowd went bonkers. Or more bonkers as they were pretty bonkers to begin with. Great atmosphere in the stadium by the way. Thankfully I was paying a bit of attention and got the goal and the celebration as James Morrison wheeled away. Annoyingly I couldn't send it though, and seeing the big agency runners collecting cards around the pitch to edit & send from the dry photographers' room is just very frustrating.England then knocked in a goal with Walcott bashing it in quite nicely. Got that as well thankfully though the cele went the other way, although I did get a shot of it in the Sun this morning rather against the odds.I should mention that I had my Olympus OM-D set up as a remote and it worked very well indeed, triggered by the foot switch I hacked together a while back. Unfortunately Walcott was too far back to really get a decent image from the remote, which I'd covered in a cloth to keep it from getting soaked.Halftime saw me chase inside to edit and send pics from the first half that simply couldn't get out over the flaky pitchside wireless. Aaaghh - so annoying to have those going in late.The second half was quite crazy, with Kenny Miller putting Scotland ahead 1-2 quite early on. Happily I got the goal and the cele came right my way, with the Scottish fans going completely and utterly bonkers. With those in the bag and, miraculously, sent out in decent time, I looked up to see a Welbeck goal at the other end to equalise. Thankfully Jimmy got that and the cele as well.Rooney being substituted was always going to be news, so I shot that (as well as trying to get some decent headshots of him during the game). On came Rickie Lambert who moments later got the winner with a cracking header. I had a few decent frames from the "wrong end" but the back pages are filled with close-ups of his cele which all look pretty cool if you were sitting in the right place.England hung on for the win though the Scots had a few late breaks which looked quite dangerous. In a way it would have been very cool for the Scots to have won it as they played much better than I've seen for a long time. Also if they had won my pictures of Miller's celebration might have actually made some decent money.A quick 30 mins in the photographers' room saw my remaining shots edited, captioned and sent, and then I was on my way back home on my motorbike. Why anyone drives a car to Wembley is beyond me as it's just so madly busy and congested. I was out and away, and for the first time in recorded history actually found my way to the M4 without heading north to the M1 first! The trip back was only marred by a wet lining in my helmet due to me leaving the visor open when it was chained to the bike. Dur.So, an evening of frustration caused mainly by me forgetting a simple £5 electrical thingy, which I won't be doing again. However I actually managed to take some decent pics and got them out moderately quickly, but it's always going to be tough to beat the big guys with their 8 or more photographers, runners, editors etc. Still, we little guys strive for success and sneak in there at a healthy rate despite all the opposition.Pics from Jimmy and me are here so you can make your own mind up if they are any good.