Pluck of the Irish

 

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 5 December 2020 at Trafford Park
Result	Wroxham 3 Milton Keynes Irish 3 (MK Irish win 4-3 on penalties)
Competition	FA Vase Round 2
Hopstats	Ground 719 on the lifetime list and I am here because of Wroxham’s clarity and timeliness of communication on social media about ticketing arrangements.
Context
Wroxham had a good run in last year’s competition and are sitting at the top of the Eastern Counties Premier Division (Step 5). MK Irish are a new name (I believe it to be more of a merger than a formation, from MK Robins and Unite MK) in the Step 6 Spartan South Midlands Division One, and they are also flying high, second in the table but with games in hand. They beat another Step 5 side, Stansted of the Essex Senior League, in the previous round.
In One Sentence
A stoppage-time equaliser had forced a penalty shootout
So What?
The usual cliché about Wroxham concentrating on the league and MK Irish being in the hat for the next round.
Match Report
Acknowledgement to the clubs’ Twitter timelines for help in identifying players. Wroxham made the early running, with Ish Fatadjo influential. A clever turn at the byeline created an early chance as his driven pass scooted through the six-yard box. Irish took the lead after 15 minutes, somewhat against the run of play. Wroxham were playing patient build-from-the-back football, with their wing-backs often in advanced positions to make runs at the defence. On this occasion, Joe Keeley’s run from the left was halted by a slide tackle and it looked to me from the other end that it was uncontrolled. Keeley hurdled the tackle, presumably no contact was made, but the run came to an end but MK got the ball quickly down the unguarded flank and out of nowhere George Shrieves was one-on-one with Ollie Sutton in the Wroxham goal. Sutton came out beyond the edge of the box to narrow the angle but Shrieves kept his composure to round him and roll the ball into the empty net. Wroxham almost responded immediately from a freekick but they also lost Fatadjo to injury on the half-hour, to be replaced by local legend Grant Holt, veteran of over 600 senior games. The game settled into the original pattern of patient attacking from Wroxham and the occasional Irish break, and then we saw the first flying save from Irish keeper Owusu Kyeremateng, who  was to play a big part in this result. This time, his save had only short-term effect because Holt was in position to score a deserved equaliser from short range from the next passage of play. Just before half-time, a superb goal from Simon Lappin, another Norwich veteran. His left foot strike from distance skimmed the turf as it arrowed just inside the post. A 2-1 scoreline felt about right on the balance and quality of play, and it would have been 3-1 but for another acrobatic stop from Kyeremateng just before the whistle. Maybe with hindsight that was the hinge point of the game. Half-time: Wroxham 2 Milton Keynes Irish 1 The second half started to get a bit tetchy, and players on both sides were visibly struggling for stamina after an hour. The Irish equaliser came as they fashioned a move down the left and Mason Spence crossed for Jack Clarkson to bury a back-post header. Again, there was an element of surprise but we now know not to underestimate the visitors. They nearly took the lead again when a shot was saved well by Sutton only for a header from the rebound to go just wide. It was interesting to watch Grant Holt at work as Wroxham were now launching waves of attacks towards the end where I was standing. Athletic tracking back cannot be his game these days, understandably. Sometimes he would stand in an offside position and direct operations. The Wroxham midfield were smart enough to adapt. He created two good chances in quick succession, one from an intelligent flick, and one from a pullback after his positional play had allowed him to get on to a through ball. It was fascinating to watch and will probably be lost in the headline from what was to come later. The Irish defence got lucky on one occasion but they stuck to their task well. The last ten minutes was end-to-end and open from two tiring teams slugging it out. Then, a penalty for Irish with just three minutes left, and from the other end I genuinely couldn’t say why – it looks to have been some kind of off-the-ball incident. Spence sent Sutton the wrong way as he rolled it into the right corner. In a crazy finale, Irish nearly added a fourth before Holt’s through ball in stoppage time played in fellow sub James Cooper, whose heels were clipped. Cooper went to the left with the penalty, Kyeremateng went the other way, so that was a last-kick-of-the-game equaliser for 3-3 and under this season’s rules it was straight to a shootout. Irish missed their second penalty, but Cooper was third up for Wroxham and this time Kyeremateng guessed correctly. Both teams scored their third, and Irish also scored their fourth, leaving Holt with a must-score placekick. Past glories count for nothing as Kyeremateng got down to his left to save the shot. He was undoubtedly the man of the match today.  There was a brief moment of unpleasantness in the post-match celebrations and Irish have tweeted that “the person concerned has been spoken to”. For this passing neutral, scurrying back to the warmth of heated seats in the car as the temperature plummeted, this was a great day out. There will be another hopper’s take on this game from Russell Cox on his blog – he must have been about 20m to my left!
Match Pix
Wroxham in the blue and white, MK Irish in orange and green.
Ground Pix
Tidy ground with a good clubhouse, tucked away on a narrow lane with an adjacent train line for added anorak value.
Covid Comment
The local case numbers are lower than they were at the end of October and once again my afternoon out was less of a risk than going to work as a teacher. The club was well prepared for temperature checking and signing in. There was a one-way system (though not always respected) and sensible arrangements for queueing for refreshments. I found my quiet corner forty minutes before KO and stayed there throughout. Around the pitch people were social distancing as much or as little as they chose, in their friends or family groups, and no-one invaded my space. There was no discernible difference in this aspect from all of the other games I have attended this season.
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 220 matches is here, on this separate page. Today, Pink beats Green and moves off the bottom of the colour table. All other places unchanged – a high-scoring draw is not a great outcome for keepers in the point allocations. With hindsight, I perhaps ought to have included points for penalty saves in the scoring system. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Home Win Was prediction correct? No % correct so far 48% (36 from 75) 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! No decision made as yet for next Saturday. Once again I will take into account coronavirus case levels and the practicalities of ticketing and travel within the current rules.