Skelmersdale Almost Force a Draw at Greenfields

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 24 November 2018 at Greenfields Sports Ground
Result	Market Drayton Town 2 Skelmersdale United 1
Competition	Northern Premier League Division One West (Step 4)
Hopstats	This is ground number 666 on the lifetime list and I am here randomishly because of the specific symmetric properties of a cat-feeding mat that was drawn to my attention yesterday.  All is covered in the preceding blogpost, and arises because I had exactly 17 grounds from which to choose.  There happen to be exactly 17 distinct ways of combining elements of symmetry (such as rotation and reflection) to create a repeating pattern in two dimensions – they are known as plane symmetry groups, or “wallpaper groups”.  I always wanted this blog to be "different", so there.  Here’s the mat in question with rhombic unit cell, mirror lines and centres of 2-fold rotational symmetry marked up. Many thanks to @ThrstleFantstic for playing along on Twitter yesterday, and @ianshillaker1 for another image a few moments later which became my reserve.
Context
Neither team in good form – 14th plays 20th.
In one sentence
The home side held on for the win after a late dismissal but they had wasted several chances earlier in the game.
So what?
MDT up to 11th, Skelmersdale stay 20th with a gap of four points.
Match Report
MDT took the game to their visitors in the early stages and the tone was set by Glynn Coney hurdling a flying Skelmersdale tackle and crossing the ball from the left.  Daniel Beddows was arriving from midfield headed the ball firmly but wide.  So it continued with plenty of home chances with the occasional visitor break.  One of these needed a magnificent old-school tackle to prevent a shot on goal – and to be fair to the attacker, he took a moment to recover before just getting up and getting on with it. MDT took the lead after 20 minutes.  I was at the other end at the time, but could see that Skelmersdale keeper Terry Smith had come off his line to block an incursion into the left edge of the area but was then unable to stop an incoming shot from a wide position by Charlie Knowles.  The home side were caught asleep defensively though within two minutes.  On their first attack from the restart, Will Dunne scored an equaliser with a crisp shot from the edge of the area, untroubled by any challenge. Incredibly, MDT nearly scored again immediately as Skelmersdale themselves lost concentration for a moment, but soon after, with 26 minutes on the clock, they cut through the centre of the defence to retake the lead through Jud Ellis. My half-time note was to the effect that MDT deserved their lead but had been somewhat wasteful in front of goal and might regret that later.  As it happened, there were no more goals in the second half.  Knowles hit the bar, and then shot wide having been teed up by Ellis.  MDT continued to press, but as the game wore on maybe they tired or started defending deeper, and Skelmersdale were definitely showing ambition for a second equaliser.  It was end-to-end high-effort stuff, but both sides lacked precision in their final pass. It also became somewhat tetchy and the card-count increased.  A foul on an MDT player was loudly proclaimed from the bench as an “assault” and they had the ball in the net, but disallowed, from the resulting set-piece.  With about ten minutes to go, something happened at the far end that led to raising of hands, pushing and shoving, and a delay of a few minutes.  The outcome of the officials’ conference was more yellows and a red for MDT’s Lyndon Campbell. This meant a few nervy minutes of hanging on for MDT, but they managed it.  Probably a fair result overall but other clubs would be unwise to think of Skelmersdale (under relatively new management) as on their way to relegation.
Pix
Interesting ground for the hopper fraternity – all neat and tidy with clearly labelled facilities (think 1970s Batman TV series - but with a "catapostrophe" for you to spot), good views, friendly people, nice clubhouse.  Well worth a Shropshire diversion even if at times the players and the dugouts between them were making all the noise.  MDT in red.
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. Today, as expected, Blue beats Orange.  However, no clean sheets and no change in the league table positions. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Home Win Was the prediction correct? Yes % of correct predictions so far 68% (15 from 22) 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 41.1 19.0 7.0 15.1 57.0 14.0 77.0 1.873 Grey 48.5 23.0 10.0 15.5 79.5 14.0 69.5 1.433 Green 86.0 43.0 11.0 32.0 145.0 22.0 105.0 1.221 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 19.0 8.0 3.0 8.0 41.0 5.0 11.0 0.579 Orange 42.5 13.0 8.0 21.5 80.5 6.0 -3.5 -0.082 Radioactive Bile 21.0 9.0 0.0 12.0 45.0 3.0 -3.0 -0.143 Yellow 33.0 9.0 7.0 17.0 70.0 5.0 -11.0 -0.333 Pink 17.0 5.0 5.0 7.0 35.0 1.0 -10.0 -0.588 Black 6.0 2.0 3.0 1.0 15.0 0.0 -6.0 -1.000 White 1.9 0.0 0.0 1.9 4.0 0.0 -4.0 -2.105
What Next?
Follow @GrahamYapp on Twitter!  36 Step 4 grounds left to go until I reach my next personal landmark of “The 388” (everywhere in England in the top eight tiers of the game).