Witton Wisdom of the North

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 26 September 2020 at the Neuven Stadium
Result	Radcliffe 1 Witton Albion 4
Competition	Northern Premier League (Step 3)
Hopstats	Ground 713 on the lifetime list, and if anyone asks I was here for an eye test. Radcliffe and Witton sounds a bit like a northern independent optician chain. This completes Step 3 for me, but there are some new grounds higher up the pyramid.
Context
Third competitive game of the season for both clubs. Witton have lost both (one league, one FA Cup). Radcliffe lost their opening league game but had a remarkable 5-3 comeback FA Cup win over Workington in midweek.
In One Sentence
Ruthless and streetwise display from Witton, as a first-half hat-trick from Scott Bakkor secured the points.
So What?
Too early to say. I don’t believe in having league tables this soon!
Match Report
The grey-haired player warming up for Witton looked familiar and a quick search reminded me that Steve McNulty (ex Luton and Tranmere among others) had signed. Witton were two up before he’d had too much to do. Scott Bakkor’s first goal was an unstoppable shot from long range in the fifth minute and it was the second chance for the visitors who had started very impressively. He got his second with a low shot into the corner after only nine minutes and Radcliffe were stunned. They reacted well and created a chance, drawing a double save by Chris Renshaw in the Witton goal. The second shot was from an offside position though he wouldn’t have known that. In fact, Renshaw was quite busy and Radcliffe had already shown this week that a two-goal deficit is not insurmountable. It was interesting to watch McNulty at work, organising others and reading the game so as to be in the right place at the right time. Just after the half-hour he mistimed a header that went straight up in the air, but he did enough to challenge for the second ball and the subsequent clearance went down the centre to Bakkor who was through one-on-one. He rounded the keeper Cameron Belford to the right and completed a notable first-half treble. Renshaw was called upon again to save, this time with his feet after a mazy direct run by Jean Louis Akpa-Akpro. I made a note that this first half had not been as one-sided as the score suggests, but Witton had been clinical. Half-time: Radcliffe 0 Witton Albion 3 The second half was less explosive until the last few minutes. There was no need for Witton to take any risks, and Radcliffe still failed to find a cutting edge. They went close from a Matty Crothers freekick which clipped the top right of the crossbar but also had to clear a Witton effort off their line. Radcliffe finally got on the scoresheet with ten minutes left, as Crothers scored from another direct free kick. Any hope of another comeback was extinguished by a defensive slip. Belford did well with an initial save from sub Steven Tames but the rebound fell to Will Jones who had an empty net in front of him. Belford had more work to do before the end, with two more decent saves in stoppage time. Good, entertaining game for the passing neutral.
Match Pix
Radcliffe in blue.
Ground Pix
Many groundhoppers like old-school character and personality for their ticks and this place has plenty. I’m a big fan of standard front doors appearing in random places, and people watching over the walls from their adjacent gardens. This club felt welcoming and friendly from the moment of arrival.
The Covid Commentary
Today was less of a risk for me personally than a normal day in my school workplace, where I spend two hours at a time in the company of teenagers, albeit very sensible ones and in a well-ventilated room. I can again give a club credit for doing its best. There was signage, there were announcements, there were one-way systems, there were seat markings, there were advanced online tickets linked to track and trace details. However, yet again there was a significant degree of non-compliance among the largely male crowd in attendance. A PA request to socially distance more adjacent to the bar area got a partial response, and this is the first time I’ve seen a club making an extra effort to enforce the expectations. I felt absolutely fine at a personal level. I had my own space and everyone was courteous. As with all matches I have attended this season, people are in effect making their own friend-and-family bubbles. Any government official looking on today would never suggest going beyond 500 or so for any football match. The photos I took today are representative of what is really happening all over the country. On the drive home, I heard Chris Sutton on BBC 606 asking why more spectators can’t be allowed to watch football under socially distanced conditions. The answer, Chris, is that sadly there is no evidence whatsoever that football fans would respect the expectations, even when the club does everything to make it easily possible to comply. Anything more than this kind of number would come into even more close contact on their journeys to the ground and in the pre-match pubs and fast-food places. I can imagine that the lower league season could go on like this almost indefinitely, and without getting too much into the science (but track down my Facebook page if you want to see more commentary) I just cannot see bigger numbers being allowed back into the professional leagues this season. I hope I’m wrong, but if what I am seeing at lower league football is typical, and taking this alongside the emerging picture from schools and universities, then we should be headed for a no-alternative two-week circuit-breaker lockdown in October so that politically less acceptable decisions can be avoided around Christmas.
Goalkeeper Top Colour Stats Update
Usually accompanied by a pre-match prediction on Twitter just before kickoff. Working towards being able to compute a respectable statistical significance test by the end of the season. The full keeper top performance table from my last 214 matches is here, on this separate page. Today, Purple loses to Radioactive Bile and drops one place in the table, but neither gets a clean sheet bonus. The prediction success rate dips below 50% once again. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Home Win Was the prediction correct? No % of correct predictions so far 49% (34 from 69) 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. The odd decimal places were caused either by undeniable half-and-half tops or lower league sub keepers 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 (and supported by anonymous scientists of some description) that orange is the best colour for a goalkeeper because it changes the behaviour of other players around the box. It is supposedly because of an innate primeval human reaction to the colour and the colour “spreads” more in the vision of a striker at the key moment of decision. Genius or garbage? The evidence is gathering here, and is leaning towards the latter.
What Next?
Follow @GrahamYapp on Twitter! My priorities will be Brentford, Gloucester City, York City and Boston United but these may not be possible anytime soon. I have fourteen Step 4 grounds left to complete, not including Guernsey who are taking a year out of competition, and there is a chance of ticking one of them next weekend in the FA Cup. Which one may depend on clarification about spectators from the FA, for those who are hosting a Step 2 side, and of course on ticket availability.