Play with a Legend (Newcastle legend John Beresford)

As a 90s football fan - or a Newcastle fan growing up in the 90s, the entertainers were really, really a team that hit a lot of buttons as a football fan and entertained the nation. One of those players that did a lot of that was John Beresford and it was an absolute pleasure to be able to take pictures of him at 55 taking the mick out of a lot of younger people on the pitch as part of the ”Play with a Legend” shoot at Gateshead Powerleague. Play with a Legend gives groups of people the opportunity to play five-a-side football with an actual football legend. Now, that could be from their own club or it could be from the national team or an all-around legend.

So for me it was great for it to be a Newcastle legend. I knew of him obviously from my time in the 90s but it was also amazing to hear some of the stories that he had around the legends that were playing at that time from Faustino Asprilla to Rob Lee to a bit of Gazza actually from when he played for England. 

So my job on the day was to capture the feeling of the day and the laughs of being shown how to play football by a Premier League footballer. It really made people smile for the guys that were playing in Sunday League and just enjoying their football.

Technically it was quite a difficult shoot. It was on a five-a-side pitch with fencing around the outside and a significant amount of metalwork at both ends of the goal so being able to capture that was technically quite difficult - To find little gaps or to find locations that worked - both for the Team, the players and the ball - to get that essence of the day without leaving lots of metalwork and artefacts in there.

What this shoot did give me the opportunity to do was to have a good chat with my friend Serena Taylor who is the Newcastle United photographer and appreciate yet again her amazing skill set at being able to capture footballers on a weekly basis. I’ve worked with Serena in the past and Newcastle United but this was a good opportunity to get some of my sports photography skills from over the years back into the portfolio.

What other sports would you like to see featured on here?