Weirdly, it's not for me....

Archant photographer Simon Finlay tells the story behind his iconic shot of Jeremy Goss volleying the Canaries into the lead in Bayern's Olympic Stadium in the Uefa Cup.

'It was the first football match I had ever covered abroad and why I went I am not really sure. Not being a football fan myself I was rather surprised to be asked.

'But I'm a professional photographer and that encompasses taking photographs of all sorts of things, from fires and fashion to football, and I was obviously delighted to be going abroad with my work.

'People often say how lucky photographers are at matches, they get such a fantastic view. Well you can't actually see a game the same way as a supporter does. We are shooting with lenses with a fairly high magnification, so it's a bit like looking down a telescope.

'I tend to try and keep one eye on the action and the other on the lens and on this occasion it worked out perfectly. I had to look at the action on You Tube to remind me what happened, because it was so quick. There was a headed clearance and Gossy just put his foot through it. As for the picture, it almost happens automatically. I took the shots and I think the one that ended up in the paper was the first one of three. Obviously at the time I didn't know if I had captured it, whether the photograph was sharp, because cameras didn't auto-focus so quickly in those days. Those were the days of film cameras - there were no digital cameras then and I had to wait until after the game to check.

'So I just carried on covering the game, although obviously it was in the back of my mind 'Have I got it, have I missed it?'

'We had arranged beforehand to work in conjunction with an agency who had access to a dark room in the Olympic Stadium. So I went up there, gave my films to a German guy and he said: 'Did you get it?' I replied: 'I'm not sure'. There was a little bit of a buzz going round. It took about 20 minutes to process and you just sit there. He then came out and I put the relevant roll on the light box, got the magnifying glass out and there it was. I thought, 'I've got it!' I could almost feel the other guys leaning over to get a look and they were delighted for me. The first thing that occurred to me was I hadn't got the ball in. But for an image like that it didn't really matter. It means a lot to me that I captured a moment that will go down in the history of Norwich City Football Club – and Norwich's history for that matter.'

Posted By: DrDublin on October 19th 2024 at 11:34:32

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