Current Affairs - Composure is the Potential Difference in the Dynamo Derby

 

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Monday 30 August 2021 at the Dovecote Stadium, Butthole Lane
Result	Shepshed Dynamo 0 Loughborough Dynamo 1
Competition	Northern Premier League Midland Division (Step 4)
Hopstats	Ground 724 on the lifetime list. After Saturday’s 18hr 8-legged train trip to Devon, I needed something more straightforward today. So when, as a physics teacher, I saw that my nearest unvisited Step 4 ground was hosting the Dynamo Derby, well, it would have been rude not to, wouldn’t it?
Context
13th v 11th. Loughborough are out of the FA Cup and have a win and a draw from four games, but have lost all of their away games so far. Two days ago they walloped Sporting Khalsa 6-2. Shepshed are also out of the FA Cup and their first win of the season came just two days ago. They also had a draw, so both teams have four points but Shepshed have played one game fewer. All of this incomplete and contradictory information means that we might as well make our predictions from something mad like the colour of the goalkeeper tops. Shepshed are back up at Step 4 after their combined record for the last two seasons in the United Counties League was enough to get them a promotion.
In One Sentence
Ether keenly-contested or embarrassingly fractious, depending on your point of view, and settled from the penalty spot early in the second half.
So What?
The teams finish the day in 13th and 8th places respectively.
Pre-match Entertainment
I became the 5738th groundhopper to take this picture.  A butt in this context is an archery target, by the way. Just to be clear.
Match Report
Shepshed started brightly and most of the early play was in the Loughborough half, but it was the visitors who created the first clear-cut chance in the 14th minute. A free-kick was bought on the left flank, the cross caused penalty area chaos. The ball stayed out of the Shepshed net through a combination of crossbar and an excellent double reflex save by home keeper Brandon Ganley. Ganley, I believe, was making a second debut for the club having re-signed this week due to an injury to Matthew White. No player hat much time on the ball so passing play in the first half at least was sacrificed for first-time knocks and volleys. Both teams came close to scoring as we approached the 20-minute mark. Firstly Shepshed’s John King shot narrowly wide, and then Loughborough’s Kevin da Silva Bastos rolled the ball wide, Ganley doing well to narrow the angle and take away a really clear scoring chance. The first of several tetchy flashpoints came after 25 minutes. I’ve been unlucky with my physical placement recently and again the incident was on the far side from me. There was a crunching tackle, or attempted tackle. I couldn’t give a sensible view about right and wrong, but there were words exchanged and soon there was a large melée of players, plenty of in-your-face confrontation but short of blows being exchanged, it seemed. It took a couple of minutes for the officials to get things calmed down, and at least two players were cautioned, one from each side. There could have been a third, but I’m not totally sure. It was all a bit unseemly. On 34 minutes, a straight red card was shown to Loughborough’s Jake Finnerty, for a tackle deemed dangerous. Again, I was at the other end so can’t say much more other than my first impression had been that it was clumsy and mistimed rather than malicious. However, tempers were frayed and there were three more yellows in quick succession before the interval as the referee sought to bring the game back under control. That brought the card count to six yellows (maybe five) and the red for the first half. That may be a personal record among the games I have watched. Loughborough had made a tactical substitution after the dismissal, so the second half was going to be decided, so we thought, by whether Shepshed could get a passing game going to make the extra man count. In fact the first key event was the winning goal, timed at 49 minutes, given for a foul, and yes, of course at the other end from me. Curtis Burrows scored what turned out to be the only goal of the game. Another crunching tackle and set of confrontations led to two more yellow cards, including visiting keeper Jason Alexander for protesting outside his area. Shepshed did indeed try to impose a passing game, using both flanks, but the final ball was often disappointing and you could sense a growing frustration as Loughborough held firm. Shepshed came close to an equaliser two or three times. One effort was correctly disallowed for offside. One deflection bounced wide with Alexander about to dive the other way. Then the final sign that this was not Shepshed’s day was the ball smacking back and down off the crossbar with Alexander, for once, beaten. In the last few minutes it became ten v ten as Ben Starkie was also dismissed for a bad tackle. That made it easier for Loughborough to see out the final moments and hold on to the points. The game was interesting and entertaining in the sense that the result was in doubt until the end, and a turnout of 486 was very decent. As a passing neutral, I don’t blame the ref as much as the supporters around me (I was FA Class III myself back in the day after all). It's not always his ... wait for it ... volt. #sorrynotsorry
Other Match Pix
Shepshed in black-and-white.
Ground Pix
Plenty of structural features to keep the traditionalist groundhopper happy. If visiting, read the suggestions for parking in advance and get here early is my advice.
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 225 matches is here, on this separate page. Today, Orange lined up against Green. Green’s victory and clean sheet does not change the order in the league table, but it did bring the prediction success ratio back to exactly 50%. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Away Was the prediction correct? Yes % of correct predictions so far 50% (40 from 80) 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! Three of my unvisited Step 4 grounds (Basingstoke Town, Corinthian & Runcorn Linnets) are hosting FA Cup ties next Saturday and all being well I will be choosing one of them somehow. Whether it will be done by the blog’s signature randomishness or just transport practicalities is not yet clear. Watch this space!