The Floodlights at Crystal Palace
The other day I met someone who told me he saw Crystal Palace hold Real Madrid to a 2-2 draw at Selhurst Park, this in the days when Crystal Palace were in the third division (Real Madrid then were a top European club as they are today).6-Mar-06: the score was actually 4-3 (to Real), says Mick who emailed to correct me. Apologies!
The game was held for the opening of Palace's new floodlights in 1962 - at the time the floodlights were the very latest and Selhurst Park was the best floodlit stadium in the country (maybe even the world?). Anyway, Mike concluded that perhaps Palace is no longer at the leading edge of night action.
Photo: Dave Winter
A quick search and I found this about the lead up to the game members.aol.com/fprogs/cpal01.htm
Always funny how little coincidences in life occur. The following weekend there was a little photo montage in the Sunday papers, and there was this piece written by the photographer:
Light Fanastic
Photographing night games can be a problem. The lens is always open, so you
can't stop down, which makes it difficult to get good depth of field. But
the floodlights at the Olympic Stadium in Munich are the best I've ever
experienced, which did a lot to help this picture of Steven Gerrard in the
thick of the action. By contrast, the lights at Newcastle on Wednesday
weren't that good; the best I've found in England are at Selhurst Park.
Extract from Independent on Sunday (photographer & author: David Ashdown)
Dave Winter owes me a pint - he works as a football photographer in France and sent me a few pictures...
The photo of Laurent Robert at the top of this page was taken at Parc des Princes (very good floodlights). Below left: Henry (of France) and Njanka (Cameroun) was taken at Stade de France (pretty good floodlights), below right Scholes (England) and Kuqi (of Finland) at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki ("the worst international floodlights I've ever come across" - Dave's words - I didn't make it to the game.)
Photos: Dave Winter
Dave's opinion on Crystal Palace: their lights are pretty good. Unfortunately, until Palace qualify for (any) European championship there's little chance of me getting some cool photos of Palace in action... Last picture for now. These are PSG fans: it must be reassuring that in most continental games a match need not stop in the event of not enough coins being dropped in the light meter.
Photo: Dave Winter
Footnote: Dan is an Arsenal fan.
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