James Crombie has won plenty of awards down the years, twice taking the overall PPI Photographer of the Year gong. And yet, he ended up being a snapper almost by happenstance.
He worked in IT but all the while, he was interested in photography, as a hobby as much as anything. He then applied to take part in a reality TV series called No Experience Required. The idea was that various companies – among them the Inpho sports photography agency – would audition people who had never worked in a particular area before and at the end, take them on to the staff for six months.
“I would say it took me 10 years to get comfortable with it. I was obsessed from the start. For most of that first six months, I was sitting in the office obsessed with how the other lads were cropping pictures, obsessed with settings, obsessed with the equipment. Eventually, near the end, one of them said to me, ‘Here, are you not going to go out and take any pictures? They won’t keep you on if you don’t.’
“It nearly hadn’t occurred to me that I could go out and take them, weird as that sounds. I half-thought I had to stay in the office. So I went out every night to a different football match – Dublin championship, intermediate games, junior games, down to Wicklow for more games then. I still have those pictures and they’re brutal. But that’s how it started.”
“I think you need to keep some element of nervousness when you go to games. You don’t want to be too comfortable. If Dublin or Limerick are attacking in the last play of an All-Ireland final, your nerves have to be high because you don’t want to miss the shot.
“Those last shots are where you have to be nervous. I’d say something like that happens maybe 10 times in a year. You know it, you can feel it in the stadium, the last play is so important and you don’t want to mess it up. You need that little bit of edge.”
Fionn McGivern (2) watches Kilkenny v Clare, July 2023
I was watching this little kid for about seven or eight minutes while the game was going on. I was very relaxed that day. I was looking for something different and I remember spotting that little kid out of the corner of my eye. I had the game going on in my little analogue radio so I knew I could turn and get anything if I needed to.
But this little lad was just there and I followed him for about seven or eight minutes, maybe nine. Just waiting for him to get into that perfect stance, the way he is in the shot. I got a great buzz out of it.
The kid was from Antrim. His parents were massive Kilkenny fans. They were down for the game. Somebody found them afterwards and did a story on them and they ended up getting tickets for the final because of it. The kid ended up being interviewed on Kilkenny radio. That one was good fun.
Supporter at Covid-era club championship match, September 2020
Sport had just started back but no crowds were allowed at games yet. This was a Roscommon semi-final between St Brigid’s and Boyle. I was taking pictures of it when I saw this head poking up over the wall behind the goal. So I said I’d go out and have a look.
I got out into this graveyard behind Dr Hyde Park. This guy had carried his ladder all the way through the graveyard and propped it up. I didn’t want to disturb him in case he fell off so I took a few snaps and happened to get this one just as Boyle scored.
I went over to him then and asked could I publish the photo. “Oh Jesus no,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be here.” There were still restrictions at that stage on how far from your house you were allowed to go. But I said I wouldn’t use his name and would only show him from the back so he was okay with it.
A few weeks later, his daughter got on to me and asked could she get the original. Apparently it went viral and everyone recognised him. He ended up doing a two-page spread in the Roscommon Herald.
Connacht bench at a Challenge Cup game in Siberia, January 2016
This was a mad adventure. Enisei-STM were the first Russian club to play in the Challenge Cup and Connacht went to Siberia for the game. we were told there could be up to 30,000 at it – we turned up and there were about 400 there. It was the coldest I’ve ever been, the harshest conditions I’ve ever seen a match be played in.
I had about a dozen layers on me and I was still frozen solid. I saw the Connacht bench from the far side of the pitch but it took me about 10 minutes to walk around because I nearly seized up with the cold. They had blankets and hot water bottles and hot chocolates for when they came off the pitch.
[ Bryan O’Brien: This will be the year I put order on the chaos of my photo archiveOpens in new window ]
It took us about a week to get home. The charter plane Connacht had hired hadn’t moved for four days and was completely frozen solid when we got back to it. So we had no way of getting out of there. By the time we did, our five-day visas had run out. We had to fly to Moscow to get our visas renewed just to leave the country. Players got processed first, officials next. I’d say I was pretty much the last one out.
♦ Murmurations by James Crombie is published by Lilliput Press
