Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts

Friday, 2 November 2018

Anyone for Tennis Borussia?



Hopperational Details
Date & Venue
Friday 26 October 2018 at Mommsenstadion, Berlin
Result
Tennis Borussia 4 Hertha Zehlendorf 1
Competition
Oberliga Nordost-Nord (5th tier in Germany, regionalised)
Hopstats
Ground 662 on the lifetime list.  My first game in Germany, and I am here because I am here for a week of history and culture, starting right here.  This game chosen because I am staying just a few stops away on the S-Bahn and the league table suggests a good contest.
Context
Both teams having a decent season so far, lying 2nd and 4th respectively in the division.
In one sentence
How did that happen?
So what?
By the end of the weekend, Tennis Borussia stayed in 2nd position, and Hertha Zehlendorf dropped one place to 5th.
Match Report
Tennis Borussia showed most initiative in the early minutes but Sebastian Huke turned in an opening goal for the visitors with ten minutes gone.  I found out later that this was a goal against his previous club.  Thiago da Silva then shot narrowly wide from distance for the home side.  However, Hertha then had at least four clear chances to add another goal before the 20-minute mark.  Shots were deflected, blocked or sent just wide and TeBe were all over the place until they themselves hit the post with a shot from Efe Önal.  One of the Hertha chances had stemmed from a TeBe corner and the hosts were so nearly guilty of self-destruction.  I noted at this point that the score could have been 1-5, all the more odd considering what was about to happen after the interval.

TeBe were quite simply a different side after the break.  They stunned Hertha with two quick goals from Bekai Jagne.  The first was a header from a corner and the second was an absolute belter, a shot across the keeper from some way out.  Da Silva added a third from the penalty spot just after the hour after a needless trip in a wide position.

The craziness continued with a soft penalty for Hertha.  The referee gave this kick too for an alleged trip.  Up stepped Huke, but his kick went over the bar, to considerable relief and amusement from the home fans.  Da Silva’s second completed the scoring and the turnround.  Splendid entertainment for the passing international neutral.
Pix
TeBe line up in all white.













Berlin
This Friday-evening game was the start of my first trip to the great city of Berlin.  More culture followed the next day with a superb performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony by the Berliner Philharmoniker.  Then there were visits to several historical museums and sites.  For this particular Brit, visiting in the last year before an unwise (in my opinion) Brexit from the EU, it was a challenging week.  Germany is very honest about its 20th Century history on both sides of the Berlin Wall and it was hard for me to escape the conclusion that my UK contemporaries have placed insufficient value on over 70 years of postwar peacetime and economic co-operation in Europe.  This city has the proof of just how large groups of people can be goaded into insane courses of action through creation of fear and suspicion.  The redemption and rebuilding of this city is impressive, as Mrs Y frequently confirmed during the week (she was here in 1976 and both experienced and crossed the Berlin Wall, and has been here more recently with several student groups).  I’m very glad to have spent half-term here.
Learn German Through Football
die Mannschaft – team
die Punkte – points
die Tore – goals
der Schiedsrichter – referee
der Wechsel – change (in this context, substitution)
der Stürmer – forward
im Mittelfeld – in midfield


Huke schießt ihn drüber – Huke shoots it over

Goalkeeper Top Colour Stats
New this season – a pre-match prediction based only on keeper top colours as a preliminary test of the data.  Proper statistical significance test to follow in due course.

Tonight, Orange beats Yellow but no clean sheet for either.

Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour:
Prediction:
Home Win
Was the prediction correct?
Yes
% of correct predictions so far
67% (12 from 18)

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. For new readers the odd .5 was caused by a shocking half-and-half shirt and the .1 was due to a substitute goalkeeper 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 that orange is the best colour for a goalkeeper because it changes the behaviour of other players around the box.  It may not be statistically significant as yet, but football coverage ignores this point as a matter of routine.


P
W
D
L
GC
CS
Pts
PPG
Red
10.0
5.0
1.0
4.0
11.0
3.0
20.0
2.000
Blue
40.1
18.0
7.0
15.1
56.0
14.0
75.0
1.870
Grey
47.5
22.0
10.0
15.5
79.5
13.0
61.5
1.295
Green
85.0
42.0
11.0
32.0
145.0
21.0
97.0
1.141
Fire Cracker
3.0
1.0
0.0
2.0
6.0
1.0
2.0
0.667
Maroon
5.0
2.0
1.0
2.0
9.0
1.0
3.0
0.600
Purple
19.0
8.0
3.0
8.0
41.0
5.0
11.0
0.579
Radioactive Bile
20.0
9.0
0.0
11.0
40.0
3.0
2.0
0.100
Orange
38.5
12.0
8.0
18.5
73.5
6.0
0.5
0.013
Yellow
33.0
9.0
7.0
17.0
70.0
5.0
-11.0
-0.333
Pink
17.0
5.0
5.0
7.0
35.0
1.0
-10.0
-0.588
Black
6.0
2.0
3.0
1.0
15.0
0.0
-6.0
-1.000
White
1.9
0.0
0.0
1.9
4.0
0.0
-4.0
-2.105


What Next?
Follow @GrahamYapp on Twitter!  Not sure about tomorrow as yet – may be constrained to be local after the week away, by large piles of marking and laundry!  My hopping priority is to work through my remaining list at Step 4.


Thursday, 9 August 2012

Great Reception for Timo Boll


The ExCeL Arena is in the redeveloped Docklands area of London


Hopperational details
Date & Venues
Wednesday 8 August 2012 at the ExCeL Arena, London
Competition
The Olympic Games – London 2012
Men’s team table tennis, bronze medal match
Hopping
Fifth Olympic sport seen live, first time watching top level table tennis (even though I played the game at a moderate level in town and university leagues in my teens and is the only sport in which I have a trophy!)
Results
Germany 3 Hong Kong 1
This day in one sentence
A bronze medal decider followed by a trip into the city to sample some of the general London atmosphere.
So what?
Germany has the bronze medal in this event.
The drama unfolds
The best-of five format has two singles, a doubles and then two more singles.  Each match is also the best of five sets – each set is played to 11 points with a minmum two-point advantage.

The opening singles brought out Germany’s Timo Boll and Hong Kong’s Chu Yan Leung.  Boll took an early grip on proceedings, was temporarily pegged back to 9-6 but saw through an 11-6 set win.  Solid in both attack and defence he won the second even more convincingly, 11-3.

Here’s a clip – it shows Boll (in the black kit)  putting the first point on the board for an 11-7 set win.  As you can tell, I was embedded in the German support.  Impressive stuff.  Germany 1-0 Hong Kong



Dmitri Ovtcharov played Peng Tang.  A closer contest, Tang opened up leads at 9-6 and 10-7, but a timeout seemed to work in favour of Ovtcharov who drew level to 10-10 and won his second set point.  13-11, as shown in this clip.



The second set was even closer.  The German had two serves at 9-9 but he missed a smash at match point.  Tang turned it around and won the set 13-11 to make the match level.

In the third set, Tang led in the early stages but a superb rally set up a set point for Ovtcharov, who had a simple smash to take the set 11-9.

This clip shows the German securing the second team point in an 11-9 set victory.  Germany 2-0 Hong Kong


For the doubles, Bastian Steger joined Ovtcharov and Tianyi Jiang joined Leung.  The Hong Kong pair wasted four set points before converting the fifth and a 12-10 set win.  A serving fault gave them the second set too, 11-8.

This clip from the third set shows Hong Kong proceeding to a straightforward 11-4 set win, giving them the match 3-0 and a point on the board.  Germany 2-1 Hong Kong


Jiang stayed at the table to face Timo Boll in the next singles matchup.  Jiang worked his way to two set points, and Boll’s serve clipped the net – he won the pont on his second serve.  A drive from his next serve clipped the net and missed the table, giving the set to Jiang 11-9 and completing the momentum switch in the match overall.

Boll steadied himself and won the second set convincingly, 11-5.  He also held his nerve at the critical points near the end of the third, which he won 11-9 after he had trailed 5-7 and 6-8.

Jiang took a grip, so it seemed, 7-3 but Boll got it back to 6-8 and then 7-8.  Here is the climax of the game, as Boll did the job and won the decisive set 11-9 to give Germany the match and the bronze medal.  He was the star man of the day and gave me a punning opportunity that I could not miss.  Final score Germany 3-1 Hong Kong



After that, I took the cable car from Victoria Dock to North Greenwich and meandered my way back to London to sample the atmosphere, first at Canada Wharf and then along the South Bank from the Tower to Westminster.  Here are a few snaps from the day – the high-level ones are from the top of The Monument.


Aerial view of "The North Greenwich Arena"
 

A Routemaster 'bus
 

The steps inside The Monument
One of many Wenlocks (and Mandevilles) dotted around the city
 







What Next?
FA Cup groundhopping at Sleaford Town v Holwell Sports on Saturday.

UPDATE: an out-of-the-blue attack of labyrinthitis (a viral inflammation of the inner ear) has put an indefinite hold on my travelling.  Will be anything from one to six weeks according to the www but hopefully at the shorter end for me as I have no other complications.  Watch this space, and cheer me up by sending me a Hopping for Moorfields pledge (see previous posts for details, esp. 3-2-1 Go!) - normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.