The Draw of the Seasiders

 

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 13 August 2022 at the Hudgell Solicitor Stadium, Queensgate
Result	Bridlington Town 1 Long Eaton United 1
Competition	Northern Premier League (Division One) East – Step 4
Hopstats	Ground #745 on the lifetime list. Chosen pragmatically this time because train travel not recommended this weekend due to industrial action, so I decided to use a weekend before the new school term starts to get one of my longer car journeys completed.
Context
The first league game of the season. Both sides came through their FA Cup ties last week. Bridlington had a 3-1 home win over Whitley Bay, and Long Eaton had a comfortable 3-0 replay win at home having been held 2-2 by Sherwood Colliery in the first game.
In One Sentence
Two well-matched sides take a point each, with Long Eaton forced to manage the last few minutes with ten men after a red card.
So What?
Too early to say. I refuse to acknowledge league tables at this point in the season.
Pre-match Entertainment
Not much this week after a five-hour drive. I did stop briefly to have a look at the Humber Bridge. I discovered that parking in Bridlington on a holiday Saturday needs a time machine so I could have got there on the preceding Thursday. Anyway, it was nice to see the sea.
Match Report
Lewis Dennison’s early volley would have been a worldie for the home side, but in any case he gave them the lead after only eight minutes with a perfectly placed header from a right-wing cross. From then on the two teams largely matched each other for a long period. I heard some of the youngsters in the crowd describing one of the players as being like a science teacher, but decided not to ask about the assessment criteria. Considering the very high temperature, both teams coped well and it was sensible to take a drinks break. Brid held their lead at the interval and Long Eaton’s first real sniff of an equaliser came on the hour, with a header at the far post in a crowded penalty area at a corner. They did get their goal five minutes later. The Long Eaton substitutes were having an impact. A good move down the right flank led to Kameron Campbell having time and space in the area. Depending on your point of view he either took an age or showed great composure before blasting the ball into the net. By now both sides were playing direct football and looking for the winner, at least until Long Eaton fullback Brad Wilson was red-carded for an uncontrolled and mistimed challenge. Brid’s big chance to grab the win was thwarted by a superb tackle by Sam Parker on Dennison with five minutes left. A header drifted wide in stoppage time but probably a draw was fair enough. Considering the conditions, this was a decent, entertaining game.
Match Pix
Bridlington in red.
Ground Pix
I should think this one is popular with hoppers – great location, decent facilities, bit of old-school character.
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 246 matches is here, on this separate page. Today saw Fire Cracker (as defined by Dulux) share the points with Grey.   Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Away Win Was the prediction correct? No % of correct predictions so far 48% (48 from 101) 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! I’m staying overnight in Leicester and heading to some one-day cricket tomorrow. After that, other family commitments will probably need to take priority until I head for the Welsh hop on August bank holiday weekend. For the remainder of the season, I have one step 3 priority (Plymouth Parkway) and 21 at Step 4. Quite a few of them are long journeys so there may have to be more pragmatism than randomness for a while.