Decision Time

I have fourteen possible hops to new grounds on Saturday in the FA Trophy.  I would quite like to hop in the general direction of Offa's Dyke this week because there is some tasty Welsh Premier league action in the borders on Sunday, so the odds for individual matches today will be biased towards North and Midlands using an on-screen digital clock.  The choice will be decided simply by the number that I see in the SECONDS column when I remove the high-tech masking device covering the screen.  To ensure that this itself occurs at a random moment, I am not allowed to do this until I roll a six on a low-tech die.  Die is the correct singular form of dice and I am sticking to it.  Got that?  Good, here we go.

The cup-ties, and their links to the seconds display are as shown below:

Home	KO	Away	Seconds
Curzon Ashton	15:00	FC Halifax Town	00 to 08
Rushall Olympic	15:00	Stourbridge	09 to 17
Mossley AFC	15:00	Nantwich Town	18 to 26
Radcliffe Borough	15:00	Witton Albion	27 to 35
Chorley	15:00	Marine	36 to 41
Whitby Town	15:00	Clitheroe	42 or 43
Stocksbridge Park Steels	15:00	Rugby Town	44 or 45
Tonbridge Angels	15:00	Enfield Town	46 or 47
AFC Sudbury	15:00	Hendon	48 or 49
Truro City	15:00	Horsham	50 or 51
Folkestone Invicta	15:00	Thamesmead Town	52 or 53
Bognor Regis Town	15:00	Godalming Town	54 or 55
Bideford	15:00	Dulwich Hamlet	56 or 57
AFC Totton	15:00	Romford	58 or 59

By the way, this methodology is quite respectable for decision-making.  A very good (and possibly optimal) strategy for penalty takers is to base the decision about where to place the penalty on the second hand of the stadium clock at the moment the kick is awarded.  Say, anything from 0 to 20 means hit it Left, 21 to 40 is Right, 41 to 50 is straight down the middle.  These intervals could be subdivided for low/high variants (e.g. 0-10 is high left, 11-20 is low left), or perhaps given different weightings so they are not equally likely.  It would be important that only the penalty taker and perhaps the coach know the code.  It means that the stress of the decision is removed from the attacker, the attacker cannot be blamed if the keeper guesses right, and the keeper has no chance of guessing from looking at the taker's previous penalty history.  If the stadium clock has no second hand, then the coach’s wristwatch could do the job.  It’s this sort of thing that makes life interesting, even if I'm not.

So, where am I going? Die, camera, action …