Saturday 17 November 2018

Westfield Show Their Potential



Hopperational Details
Date & Venue
Saturday 17 November at Woking Park
Result
Westfield 2 Tooting & Mitcham United 1
Competition
Isthmian Division 1 South Central (Step 4)
Hopstats
Ground 665 on the lifetime list.  I am here randomishly (you’ll love this, bear with me if you missed this) because this is my nearest unvisited Step 4 ground to the parliamentary constituency of Maidenhead, whose MP was the first to be mentioned by name after 12 noon on The Guardian’s live coverage of Brexit on Friday 16 November.  Since that is Theresa May, then I guess this was the more predictable of the randomish hops I have done recently.  However, it was only just before Liam Fox popped up in Bristol with some political pontification, and this would have sent me to Mangotsfield instead.  It’s randomish, and the evidence is on Twitter.
Context
12th v 7th.  Westfield came up from the Combined Counties League last year.  Not to be confused with Westfields FC of Hereford, in the Midland Premier League.  Tooting & Mitcham have been yo-yoing of late and came down from Step 3.
In one sentence
A long shot found the corner of the net in the 93rd minute to decide the game, and all this after the visitors had led for almost an hour.
So what?
Westfield remain 12th, Tooting & Mitcham drop one place to 8th.
Match Report
The match kicked off in bright but cold sunshine, and Westfield looked wobbly.  Isaiah Jones held off a defender easily enough and rolled the ball past the advancing keeper Gary Ross for an early lead for the visitors.  There was an element of home generosity about it.  It took twenty minutes before Westfield made the other keeper Luke Colquhoun make a save, and in the meantime T&M had looked dangerous and sharp except for the final pass.  There were very few really clear chances, and I noted (honest) that T&M might regret being only one goal up.  They were nearly caught just before the interval but Colquhoun made the necessary save at his near post.

Isaiah Jones (r) is about to open the scoring
The second half continued in the same pattern.  The visitors had much of the play minus a cutting edge.  The game was competitive with plenty of midfield tackling, and we entered a stop-start phase as some of the challenges were mistimed.  On the hour mark, I noted that T&M would have been exceptionally frustrated by now had they not had the early lead.  Ross became irritated with some of his defenders’ positioning.  Then, the equaliser.  A long cross from the right flank caught the T&M defence out of position and Aaron Watson had a straightforward header.

 
The game became open and frantic, and two desperate defensive touches stopped T&M from regaining the lead almost immediately.  I had predicted a draw and was feeling content as the game entered stoppage time and Colquhoun palmed the ball away for a corner.  With the clock at 90+3, the corner was cleared but the ball came out to substitute William Efambe whose low shot found its way into the corner of the net for a dramatic home win.

Pix
Modern, tidy ground with a view of Woking FC from the clubhouse balcony.  Use the postcode in the SatNav to find the vicinity but follow the signs to the Leisure Centre for the final turning.  Friendly club with good facilities.  Westfield in yellow. 

















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.

Today, an unusual situation.  Both keepers in orange (albeit one rather dusky and one bordering on fluorescent) so a draw prediction.  So close!  No change to the league table, now based on 166 matches.



Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour:
Prediction:
Draw
Was the prediction correct?
No
% of correct predictions so far
67% (14 from 21)

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
48.5
23.0
10.0
15.5
79.5
14.0
69.5
1.433
Green
86.0
43.0
11.0
32.0
145.0
22.0
105.0
1.221
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
Orange
41.5
13.0
8.0
20.5
78.5
6.0
-1.5
-0.036
Radioactive Bile
21.0
9.0
0.0
12.0
45.0
3.0
-3.0
-0.143
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!  37 grounds to go to finish Step 4.


No comments:

Post a Comment