Scarborough Win is Fair Enough

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 15 September 2018 at the Flamingo Land Stadium
Result	Scarborough Athletic 3 Basford United 1
Competition	Northern Premier League (Step 3)
Hopstats	Ground 655 on the lifetime list leaving me with two more for the milestone of “everywhere from Premier League to Step 3 in England”, or “The 248”.
Context
A meeting between two upwardly mobile clubs.  Scarborough are back in the town after a period of groundsharing elsewhere, at this new facility.  Basford have a string of recent promotions and it was not that long ago when they were in the Central Midlands League.  8th plays 5th and the visitors are the top scorers in the division.
In one sentence
A solid and deserved win which was only in doubt for a minute or so after the Basford goal.
So what?
Scarborough leap to 6th place, Basford drop to 8th.
Match Report
For the first twenty minutes, the home side dominated territory and possession but really clear chances were hard to come by.  Scarborough’s own defence coped well with the occasional Basford breakout.  The opening goal came after 26 minutes and was deserved on the balance of play.  Basford keeper Kieran Preston’s punched clearance from a corner fell to Bailey Gooda who had time to control and score, possibly with a deflection en route.  The lead was protected easily enough until the interval. The second goal came only five minutes after the restart.  Credit to Nathan Valentine who beat his man on the right flank and curled a great cross on to the head of Michael Coulson, who placed a header neatly back across goal into the corner.  Wayne Brooksby dragged another shot wide as Scarborough threatened to run riot. Basford steadied themselves and got a goal back with just under a quarter-hour left.  A cross from the right was poked in from close range by Nathan Watson and suddenly the result seemed in doubt for the first time.  This state lasted all of two minutes as a trip led to a penalty, and Coulson duly scored his second of the day. Preston saved further goalbound efforts and Scarborough managed the endgame to secure the win, including a bit of coaching ball boys in the dark arts from home keeper Tommy Taylor.  There are times when the keepers are quite happy to get the ball back slowly.
Pix
Scarborough in red.  This is a neat and well-equipped new facility with an artificial pitch.
Obligatory Seaside Pic
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.  Table based on the last 156 games that I’ve watched.  Today, Blue beats Green 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 73% (8 from 11) 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 39.1 17.0 7.0 15.1 55.0 14.0 73.0 1.867 Grey 47.5 22.0 10.0 15.5 79.5 13.0 61.5 1.295 Green 82.0 41.0 10.0 31.0 138.0 21.0 100.0 1.220 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 17.0 7.0 3.0 7.0 38.0 4.0 6.0 0.353 Radioactive Bile 19.0 9.0 0.0 10.0 37.0 3.0 5.0 0.263 Orange 35.5 11.0 7.0 17.5 63.5 6.0 6.5 0.183 Yellow 31.0 8.0 7.0 16.0 65.0 5.0 -9.0 -0.290 Pink 16.0 5.0 5.0 6.0 31.0 1.0 -6.0 -0.375 Black 5.0 1.0 3.0 1.0 14.0 0.0 -8.0 -1.600 White 1.9 0.0 0.0 1.9 4.0 0.0 -4.0 -2.105
What Next?
Follow @GrahamYapp on Twitter!  The plan is to complete “The 248” with visits to Alvechurch and Bamber Bridge over the next two Saturdays.