Today Carlisle United hit the headlines when it was announced that the club had new American owners. I mean it was only a question of time as the talks had been ongoing during the time that I initially arrived in the Cumbrian capital.

My colleague, award-winning sports reporter Jon Colman, originally broke the story and this link features today’s report.

Related article: Carlisle United: Piatak family complete Blues takeover

However, my connection to the club stretches back to when I first worked in Cumbria in the mid-1990s in Barrow-in-Furness when I was at the North West Evening Mail, because, as I recall, the sports reporters at the News & Star were banned from Brunton Park and wanted some shots of the Carlisle players who were playing in a friendly against Barrow ahead of the new season.

But it was only a year or two later when I started at North News & Pictures that I was sent to Carlisle on a proper assignment in November 1996.

Basically a reporter at the News & Star had produced a story which claimed that the then owner, who had previously had a chance to buy Manchester United before they became the massive club they are now, had been visited by aliens.

I was initially sent to the home ground to stake it out to snatch a pic of Knighton with zero success. But the following day I was sent back to Brunton Park to shoot some portraits of him wearing an alien mask for the Daily Star.

Luckily I did pics of him both wearing the mask and holding it as well as shots without it in the goalmouth on the pitch. For the record he was really good to deal with and I could tell he was pleased to have avoided my camera lens on the previous day – he told me as much when we were chatting during the shoot.

The Star used a shot of him wearing the mask the following day together with one of him holding it and I was quite pleased with how they were used.

The shot without the mask was used in January 1997 when there was a more football related report on Carlisle United and the same shot was used by the Independent on Sunday in 2000.