Good Point in a One Horse Town

 

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Monday 2 January 2023 at Meadow Lane
Result	Westbury United 1 Melksham Town 1
Competition	Southern League Division One South (Step 4)
Hopstats	Ground #765 on the lifetime list and I am here pragmatically because of the 1.00pm kickoff making it much the most attractive of my alternatives for a Bank Holiday drive on England’s motorways!
Context
A mid-table clash, Westbury a few points off the promotion playoff places and Melksham a few points above the relegation ones, only three points between them. This is the home side’s first season at this level, which is why they have appeared on my priority list.
In One Sentence
A first-half with two freekick goals and a feisty ending after a red card for the home side, eventually petering out into the draw that is not a terrible result for either team.
So What?
The teams end the day 11th and 13th respectively in their league table.
Pre-match Entertainment
After the long drive past Stonehenge, time to visit the nearby white horse (well, currently whit-ish) of ancient cultural significance in this beautiful part of England. By chance, there was also a gathering of people whose cars are named after the French for two horses. From this point you can also throw yourself into the air in a padded bag and put Newton’s Laws of Motion to the test if you feel so inclined.
Match Report
Westbury took the lead with a low, well-struck freekick into the bottom right corner. It looked from my position that it could have gone underneath the jumpers in the wall. Good goal, captured in the photo below, scored by Ryan Bole.     The same player so nearly added a second. Winning the ball just outside the area as Melksham tried to play from the back, he smashed a shot against the bar. The visitors’ patient approach to their play is also worth a mention. Their general tactic seemed to be to keep possession and pass their way through the opposition lines. In the first half it had been pretty but also pretty ineffective. Then they won a freekick for handball just outside the box and I also captured in this pic the ball on its way into the net for the equaliser, scored by Sam Hendy. I can only hope the ref had decided that there was movement of hand to ball (the player was side-on to me so I can’t say) because there is no way he could have reacted in time to get it out of the way. It was starting to get tetchy. A heavy tackle from a Melksham defender led to a freekick and a yellow card, with players crowding the official. Then a tackle by Westbury’s Charlie Walton earned a straight red just before half-time. This changed both half-time team talks, I should imagine, as the teams went into the break level at 1-1. As the second half got under way, Westbury began to look content to play on the break. Melksham continued their patient approach, which became less effective as the players tired and the surface roughed up a bit. They really should have taken the lead, though, and it took a spectacular block from the home defence to keep the scores level. As the game became more open, Westbury gradually increased their own threat and for a while looked just as likely to score, before a pretty tame last fifteen minutes or so confirmed the result, as the two teams cancelled each other out. Honours even, as they say.
Other Match Pix
Westbury in green.
Ground Pix
This fixture was well-managed by the club, with a bumper crowd of over 800 in attendance for this bank holiday local derby. It was clear that some thought had gone into making it a pleasant experience for spectators, and the whole enterprise came across as being run by competent people who care.
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 266 matches is here, on this separate page. Today, the points are shared by Green and Red, and there are no changes to the positions. I was slightly surprised to see the pale green top allowed alongside the darker green for his team-mates. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Away Win Was the prediction correct? No % of correct predictions so far 44% (53 from 121) 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! Plymouth Parkway remains on my list as the only unvisited Step 3 ground but that will probably have to wait until better weather in the spring. I also have 16 to visit at Step 4, including Guernsey. At this time of year my destination decisions tend to be pragmatic and last-minute rather than truly random. The randomness will return.