Not-so-Great Railway Journeys for Me and Brighouse Town

 

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 21 August 2021 at Dean Street
Result	Shildon 2 Brighouse Town 1
Competition	FA Cup Preliminary Round
Hopstats	Ground 722 on the lifetime list. I am here randomishly because of Freddie Sears’ 95th minute penalty equaliser for Colchester against Mansfield in League Two last Tuesday. All is explained in the previous blogpost. A particular Hello goes to anyone encountering the MHR blog for the first time this season. It’s niche, and never takes itself too seriously.
Context
Shildon have opened the season with three wins, each with a clean sheet, starting with a 1-0 win over Garforth Town in the previous round. They were promoted from the Step 5 Northern League last season. Brighouse, like the hosts, are in the Step 4 Northern Premier League Eastern Division which feeds into the Step 3 Northern Premier League in the English pyramid. They have started with a defeat and a draw in the league, and enter the FA Cup competition at this stage.
In One Sentence
An entertaining game in which Brighouse were one-up heading into a frantic final few minutes that saw a red card for each side and two Shildon goals.
So What?
As with all cup-ties, Shildon go into the proverbial hat for the next round. Brighouse concentrate on the league. Oh, and the FA Trophy. And any league cups, shields, urns, vases or other assorted containers.
Pre-match Entertainment
Given the weather forecast, I decided to travel by train today and arrive early enough to spend some time at Locomotion, the town’s railway museum, before heading to Dean Street. Shildon has a significant railway history connected with the Stockton and Darlington line which was the first public railway in the country to use steam locomotives. Locomotion is well worth a visit if you are in this part of the world. A cancelled connecting train left me stuck at Darlington for an extra hour so with less time to explore museum and town. Nevertheless, saw enough impressive mechanical engineering to make it worthwhile whilst still getting to Dean Street in good time for my socially distanced circuit of the ground for photos.  I would be tilted on the train later on in the day Not at stake today. It's a Cup game. (See what I did there?)
Match Report
Brighouse should have taken the lead in the first minute and will this morning be reflecting on the number of chances and half-chances they created for a second goal. I crossed paths for the first time with fellow hopper @StuartLong19 today and he and I compared notes at various points in the game. We both felt that Brighouse on balance deserved their half-time lead as their chances had been somewhat better defined, but as the second half went on it felt to me like something would have to give for it to finish either 0-2 or 1-1. Wrong again. Well, partly. This was a good match for the passing neutral. Two well-organised sides, both looking for a win, but not one of those where they cancel each other out. There was plenty of action in the final thirds. Brighouse looked the more likely to score in the first fifteen minutes before Shildon started to compete more effectively and the game settled into a more even confrontation. Mr Whippy proving a momentary distraction for some of the younger players The passage of Mr Whippy in the adjacent street was followed by Brighouse’s Jack Boyle riding a tackle in midfield, bursting through the back line and firing over. Then Shildon striker Billy Greulich-Smith rolled the ball agonisingly just wide before they created more penalty area chaos needing a goal-line clearance. The holdup play of Laurence Sorhaindo was becoming increasingly important for Brighouse. He created another chance for Boyle to scuff before the opening goal. The same combination worked again, and this time Boyle, just before half-time, buried a low shot to the left corner from the edge of the area. The second half continued in much the same competitive and entertaining vein. Brighouse created many openings, Shildon were always in the game and starting to look a little more threatening, maybe as the clock ticked on leading to more risk-taking. Then we had the final mad minutes. Shildon equalised from the penalty spot through sub Dean Thexton with 86 minutes on the clock. I was at the other end and cannot honestly tell you why the kick was given. All square. With Brighouse on the break, the game was stopped for a foul when maybe advantage could have been played with sub Javelle Clarke clear on the left. Then with Shildon on the break in stoppage time, a mistimed attempt was deemed a dangerous tackle. The game was stopped for a straight red card for Jack Tinker. This was soon followed by a second yellow, and therefore a red, for his Shildon counterpart David Palmer.   Daniel Craggs gets the ball up and over the wall for the winner I started to wonder about whether to get to the replay at Brighouse when, in the fifth minute of added time, Daniel Craggs curled in the winning goal for Shildon from a direct freekick. No time for a Brighouse response, and so the game was won, and Shildon’s unbeaten run this season continues. I had to scuttle out of the ground sharpishly to make my train, but I’m sure there will have been both ends of the emotional spectrum on display. Well done to a resilient Shildon, commiserations to an unfortunate Brighouse, I hope to pitch up at your place sometime later in the season.
Match Pix
Ground Pix
This ground is a groundhopper gem. Traditional and embedded in its community whilst still having a good surface and good facilities. The club was friendly from the turnstile onwards and, alongside the town's wider interest, well worth my long journey today.
Opinion
It will probably be back to the Yappmobile for me. My attempt to let the train take the strain led to a wasted hour on the platform at Darlington in the morning, and a packed carriageful of drunken covidiots on the way south from York races in the evening. Although I was left alone and no-one commented on my facemask, I noted that I was the only one covered-up in my Darlington to Shildon carriage. The morning journey had been fine, but the return has inadvertently put me in a riskier situation than I wanted. I will be somewhat relieved if I turn out negative lateral flow tests in the next few days. It has to be said that the non-compliance with the guidance is mostly from the younger age bracket, and mostly from men within that. The return journey has therefore done nothing to take me away from the car and therefore our crowded roads. The train journey was deeply unpleasant for a significant part. Alcohol was flowing and the behaviour was basically ignored by the train staff. I could cope with the merriment and loudness well enough, fair enough, but the constant stream of foul language and innuendo in public does not sit well with me. I’m annoyed with myself that I didn’t challenge it until I remember that a man in his forties was murdered in this country recently for doing something similar in the street.
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 223 matches is here, on this separate page. Today, Yellow faces Blue and gets an "unexpected" win.  An anxious moment, but it rolled just wide this time. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Away Win Was the prediction correct? No % of correct predictions so far 49% (38 from 78) No change to the league table positions. 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! The general plan is to work my way through 21 unvisited Step 4 grounds in the weeks ahead, with six others in a higher tier which I will consider when CV19 case prevalence is lower.