When Herts Refuse to Be Beaten

 

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 6 November 2021 at New Cuthbury
Result	Wimborne Town 3 Kings Langley 3
Competition	Southern League Premier Division South (Step 3)
Hopstats	Ground 734 on the lifetime list. Wimborne’s new ground is the only one currently left for me at this level, and this is the first fixture here since I completed the new Step 2 grounds at York, Gloucester and Bolton earlier this season. So this isn’t random, but it completes “The 243” which is all the grounds in the first seven tiers in England. There are 245 teams in those divisions but two (Cray Wanderers & Kingstonian) are currently groundsharing with grounds already counted in that total. Another three (Hendon, Truro City and Rushden & Diamonds) share with clubs who operate in a lower tier.
Context
The clubs occupy the bottom two places in the division with six points each, although Wimborne do have two games in hand.
In One Sentence
A very entertaining game for the passing neutral, and a red card didn’t stop the visitors from grabbing a point with a very late equaliser.
So What?
Both on seven points, closing the gap by one to Merthyr Town who lost today.
Match Report
I’d only just finished tweeting the #keepertopcolourstats prediction when Wimborne had the lead. The ball was turned in from close range by Lewis Beale. Kings Langley had the ball in the net themselves within a minute but there was an offside call. After this crazy start the game settled, and the visitors started probing, enjoying the major share of possession. However, they wasted a couple of set pieces from good positions and when Beale scored again after 18 minutes it looked as if Kings Langley were going to be all style and no substance. The incident was on the far side of the ground from me (a regular occurrence this season) but Wimborne’s Charlie Gunson was perhaps slightly fortunate that the ref waved yellow rather than red after a moment of retaliation. The home side then had a good chance for a third before the visitors got on the scoresheet to make a game of it. It was a good finish across the goalkeeper to the top corner (pictured) by Harrison Crawford, leaving debutant Ryan Hall with no chance to save. Half-time arrived with the result still in doubt, just the way that us neutrals like it. After the break, Kings Langley continued with their policy of playing out from the back, with the ball on the deck for the most part. With only 50 minutes on the clock, Crawford slotted home his second and the equaliser from a very neat move, triangles everywhere. However, in less than a minute, Wimborne had the lead again. There was a push in the penalty area and Beale completed a hat-trick by converting the spot-kick. Kings Langley were not yet beaten. Hall had to be alert to smother the ball at the feet of Crawford, who could then have had his own hat-trick. His header, from another neat passing move down the left, went just wide. As we entered the final quarter, Wimborne exerted some pressure of their own, presumably having decided that three might not be enough. Then came the red card for Crawford, adjudged to have made a dangerous challenge. Wimborne pushed again for their fourth but Kings Langley did just enough to hold on, and we had reached stoppage time before another lovely flowing move down the left ended up with two subs queuing up at the far post to score. It was Will Hoskins with the final touch, whose name will be familiar to quite a few EFL supporters from his earlier career exploits. Even that wasn’t the end of the action, and just before the final whistle it took a sharp save from keeper Alfie Marriott at the other end to protect the hard-won point. I think both sides will feel they could and should have won, it was that sort of occasion.
Match Pix
Wimborne in white and black.
Ground Pix
Very well-appointed new build as you would expect. Grass pitch with an adjacent artificial surface for training.
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 235 matches is here, on this separate page. This week, two shades of blue share a draw and there is no change in the positions, a result which also brings the prediction success rate back to 50%. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Draw Was the prediction correct? Yes % of correct predictions so far 50% (45 from 90) 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! There are now 15 Step 4 grounds on my priority list which would complete the ninth tier. We are moving into the season of potential weather disruption, though, so there may have to be late, pragmatic decisions if I am to get through them all this season. Random or randomish decisions will be back whenever possible.