It's Raining Pens

No programme (just a teamsheet) so here's the food menu instead - well above average!

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Wednesday 22 August 2018 at Hayden Road
Result	Rushden & Higham Utd 6 Cogenhoe United 1
Competition	United Counties League Knockout Cup Preliminary Round
Hopstats	Ground 652, and this is a pragmatic midweek visit to the only one of my priority grounds hosting a game tonight.  Rushden & Higham United are landlords to AFC Rushden & Diamonds of Step 3, and I choose landlords rather than tenants if I possibly can for my visit.
Context
Step 6 plays Step 5 and the visitors will start as favourites.  However, hard to know in advance whether sides will be full strength.  League Cup competitions vary – pre-match consensus was that this would go straight to ET and pens if level after 90 minutes.
In one sentence
Surprisingly straightforward win for the home side after the visitors missed their third-minute penalty (one of four spot-kicks awarded tonight).
So what?
Rushden & Higham will visit Eynesbury Rovers in the next round.
Match Report
This was a game with several potential hinge points, and the first came as early as the 3rd minute.  A penalty was awarded to Cogenhoe for handball, but Ryan Dove’s spotkick was pushed away by Kyle Swailes.  Cogenhoe were applying the early pressure but Dave Townsend was able to break the defensive line on the break to score the opening goal.  It was a tidy left-foot finish whilst holding off a defender.  Jory Mann, full of running for most of the evening, added a second from the penalty spot.  He had been tripped at the byeline whilst heading for goal.  Untidy defending again and now a two-goal deficit. Cogenhoe were back in the game from the third penalty of the night.  The ref judged there had been a trip (I think) and Dove made no mistake this time.  However, here’s a second possible hinge point as within a minute Mann was sticking away his second penalty of the four awarded so far.  He had again been brought down, this time at edge of the area, and the keeper Callum Patching escaped with a yellow card.  Fair enough, but the two-goal lead now restored. I think Rushden and Higham were surprising themselves with the half-time score, which was 4-1 due to a horrible defensive miskick falling straight to Mann who duly completed his first-half hat-trick. It would be essential for Cogenhoe to score first after the break, but the home side were holding out easily enough until we reached 65 minutes or so.  As the visitors pressed forward, there was even more space at the back, but the goal to make it 5-1 was another gift.  Patching’s clearance rebounded off Jamie Russell and rolled gently into the net.  Game over.  It remained entertainingly end-to-end and the final goal came very late on from substitute Callum Dench who seized on a short backpass and kept enough composure to score under challenge.  A final 6-1 scoreline that would not have been predicted by anyone, even #keepertopcolourstats, and great entertainment for the passing neutral.
Pix
Home side in orange-and-black.  Main stand not in use.
Goalkeeper Top Colour Stats
New this season – a pre-match prediction based only on keeper top colours as a preliminary test of the data.  Proper statistical significance test to follow in due course. Tonight Radioactive Bile faces up to Grey and takes a big win but neither has a clean sheet.  Grey holds position but Bile jumps above Yellow. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Away Win Was the prediction correct? No. Not even close. % of correct predictions so far 75% (6 from 8) Based on conventional 3pts for a win, 1pt for a draw, but also -1pt for a goal conceded (GC) and +5pts for a clean sheet (CS).  Colours ranked on a points per game (PPG) basis. For new readers the odd .5 was caused by a shocking half-and-half shirt and the .1 was due to a substitute goalkeeper in a different colour.  The Fire Cracker colour was confirmed with the help of the social media team at Dulux UK.  All of this arises from a comment attributed to Petr Cech that orange is the best colour for a goalkeeper because it changes the behaviour of other players around the box.  It may not be statistically significant as yet, but football coverage ignores this point as a matter of routine. P W D L GC CS Pts PPG Red 10.0 5.0 1.0 4.0 11.0 3.0 20.0 2.000 Blue 38.1 16.0 7.0 15.1 54.0 14.0 71.0 1.864 Grey 47.5 22.0 10.0 15.5 79.5 13.0 61.5 1.295 Green 80.0 40.0 10.0 30.0 135.0 20.0 95.0 1.188 Fire Cracker 3.0 1.0 0.0 2.0 6.0 1.0 2.0 0.667 Maroon 5.0 2.0 1.0 2.0 9.0 1.0 3.0 0.600 Purple 16.0 7.0 3.0 6.0 36.0 4.0 8.0 0.500 Orange 34.5 11.0 7.0 16.5 59.5 6.0 10.5 0.304 Radioactive Bile 18.0 8.0 0.0 10.0 37.0 2.0 -3.0 -0.167 Yellow 31.0 8.0 7.0 16.0 65.0 5.0 -9.0 -0.290 Pink 16.0 5.0 5.0 6.0 31.0 1.0 -6.0 -0.375 Black 5.0 1.0 3.0 1.0 14.0 0.0 -8.0 -1.600 White 1.9 0.0 0.0 1.9 4.0 0.0 -4.0 -2.105
What Next?
Follow @GrahamYapp on Twitter!  Five more Step 3 grounds to go, but I am now doing other things for a few days so my next hop is likely to be Saturday 1 September.  Alvechurch, Bamber Bridge and South Shields are all possibilities for that day but it also depends on the FA Cup draw because I want to get the five grounds done by the end of September, before Tottenham move into their new place.