The story of a Sussex footballing season

Photographers David Bauckham and Terry Buckman pictured more than 130 games, and there is a shot from every club from Brighton & Hove Albion down to County League Division 3 sides included.

There are 105 pictures in total, and the book, called A season of Sussex soccer, also has a month-by-month review of how the season panned out.

It was launched at the Sussex County League presentation evening, and Buckman said: "David is well known for his Nomad and Pyramid Passion websites, and he has wanted to do something like this for a long time. When he asked for my help I was very happy to get involved.

"I'm so pleased with the book. It was a nightmare selecting the final pictures, but I'm delighted with the final quality.

"We crammed in six games in the last nine days of the season, but seeing the result, made it all worthwhile."

Bauckham, from Eastbourne, added: "Considering this was my first venture into self-publishing, and my first attempt at designing a book from scratch, I am delighted with how it has turned out. Although, there were a few nervy moments as the final deadline approached.

"Choosing the final pictures was desperately hard on a number of occasions, when we had several great shots from one game.

"We simply didn't have room to include every game we watched unfortunately - otherwise the book would have been half as big again."

The duo worked nearly every Saturday, and most Tuesdays and Wednesdays throughout the campaign.

Buckman, who moved from Wick to Horsham during the season, added: "We had about 200 pre-orders, and sold a few copies at the presentation evening, so are not far off from recovering our production costs now.

But, I don't think we'll ever get enough to account for our mileage!"

Buckman moved from Tadworth to Wick in 2002, and started taking football pictures only four years ago. He said: "I just went down to Arundel, and took a few tentative shots.

"And it's just snowballed from there. My son set up a website gallery (www.littlehampdon.co.uk), which people soon got to know about, and it's now had 750,000 hits.

"I even had to shift it to a different server this year, because the old server couldn't cope.

"It's all been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed the book and meeting lots of new people."

On his favourite shots in the book, Buckman said: "Off the top of my head, I like the one of Bognor's Mark Knee grabbing an opponent. The picture looks like a Vinnie Jones job, but it wasn't like that.

"I also like the one of Eastbourne Town's Simon Creighton and Burgess Hill's Steve Harper too. I also liked loads that didn't get in, and I'm going to put a gallery on my website of all my pictures which didn't quite make it into the book.

"The picture of Tom Rand looking really sad after conceding a goal, which David took, is another good picture. Tom's a good keeper, and a great guy, but I've never managed to get a decent picture of him.

"There's two matches which stick out in my memory from the season. The Horsham versus Swansea Cup match, when it was soaking wet. That was a great night, and so, too, when Eastbourne Borough won their play-off final at Stevenage."

Bauckham said: "My favourite pictures are those that have a story behind them, or those that were the result of careful planning.

"The Sidley versus Rye picture is a good example of the latter. I chose an angle and waited ages for the action to come into the frame.

"By coincidence, immediately after I got that picture, I dashed over to Eastbourne Town for the second half of their game against Worthing and took perhaps my favourite picture.

"It was raining and I had no decent pictures when referee Ashley Slaughter disallowed a Town goal . . . resulting in the inevitable protests. That was a good morning's work."

Despite moving to Horsham, Buckman hopes to be at local clubs a lot more next season. He said: "I'm hoping to do more stuff in the Arun area again. There's a lot of good people at those clubs, and I'd just like to thank Gareth Davies (Rustington FC manager] and Bob Marchant (Arundel FC chairman], who were both very encouraging with the book.

They both made sure that a lot of people knew about it."

On the future, Bauckham said: "It's very unlikely there will be a follow-up book in the next couple of seasons.

"I delibrately didn't include 2007-08 in the title. The book was titled 'A Season of Sussex Soccer' for a reason - it was only ever intended as a snapshot of one season."

The book costs just 12.50 (pp 2.50), and can be ordered from www.ccpub.co.uk

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