Street View

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Saturday 16 March 2019 at The Tannery Ground
Result	Street 0 Blackfield & Langley 0
Competition	Southern League Division One South (Step 4)
Hopstats	Ground #688 on the lifetime list, and I am here because the home club were the first to declare “Game Definitely On On On” on my Twitter Saturday Shortlist, in time for me to travel.
Context
11th plays 1st.  Blackfield & Langley won the reverse fixture but both teams lost last weekend. Likely to be a wind-affected match.
In one sentence
It was indeed a wind-affected match, and Street will argue that they had the better of it.
So what?
No change in league positions but Yate’s win means that the visitors’ lead at the top of the table is cut to one point.
Match Report
The stop-start nature of the game was established in the first fifteen minutes.  Street were playing in the slightly more comfortable direction in relation to the very blustery wind.  The pitch condition was pretty good all things considered.  Not much of note happened for the first half-hour, until the home keeper Liam Kingston saved well from Lerone Plummer, who had broken through when a defensive header went astray in the wind.  Then Street’s Harry Foster shot high and wide from his own rebound before teammate David O’Hare emulated the feat even more spectacularly a minute later.  This was a case of creating space and then sending the ball into outer space.  Kingston then had to save a swirling shot from distance and the rebound fortunately fell to safety.  It was generally a dour contest and I noted that Blackfield & Langley would be the more content given the change of ends to come for the second half.  Their keeper Lewis Noice caused a momentary flutter with a fumble but recovered, then there was almost chaos and confusion from their long throw at the other end, and finally Street got the ball in the net but the flag was up for offside.  So, nil-nil at half time. The second half actually saw Street more than hold their own.  Some of their approach play was neat, as they used the headwind to their advantage with clipped balls into the channels and flanks.  Both sides were, however, giving the ref a hard time.  We had some industrial language from both pitch and dugouts which should have been calmed down.  There were some firm tackles flying in, and the odd one was mistimed in the conditions leading to rolling around, yellow cards and general disjointedness, with plenty of offside flags thrown in. By the hour mark, Street were arguably looking more likely to score, though Blackfield & Langley did look dangerous on the break.  Street tried a training ground routine with a low driven corner to the “D” instead of a lofted cross, but it came to nothing.  Harry Foster tried to cross when he might have shot and Noice got down well to smother the chance.  In stoppage time, Zak Sharp took a yellow card for the visitors with a rugby tackle worthy of Twickenham.  I don’t think anyone will feel particularly happy with the result, other than to point out that it would be tough to play pretty football in those conditions.
Pix
Tidy ground with nice clubhouse, friendly people and comfortable seats in the stand opposite the changing rooms.  Street in green.
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.  The table is compiled from the last 189 live games that I have attended. Today, a draw and a clean sheet for both Orange and Yellow.  Yellow jumps above Radioactive Bile in the table.  Another incorrect prediction takes the success percentage another point back towards 50%. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Home Win Was the prediction correct? No % of correct predictions so far 55% (24 from 44) 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 half-and-half tops or 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 that orange is the best colour for a goalkeeper because it changes the behaviour of other players around the box. P W D L GC CS Pts PPG Red 10.5 5.5 1.0 4.0 11.0 3.5 24.0 2.286 Grey 50.5 24.0 11.0 15.5 80.5 15.0 77.5 1.535 Blue 47.1 21.0 7.0 19.1 76.0 14.0 64.0 1.359 Green 104.0 52.0 12.0 40.0 181.0 23.0 102.0 0.981 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 Orange 51.5 19.0 10.0 22.5 90.5 10.0 26.5 0.515 Purple 21.0 8.0 4.0 9.0 45.0 5.0 8.0 0.381 Black 6.5 2.5 3.0 1.0 15.0 0.5 -2.0 -0.308 Yellow 36.0 9.0 8.0 19.0 77.0 6.0 -12.0 -0.333 Radioactive Bile 23.0 9.0 0.0 14.0 51.0 3.0 -9.0 -0.391 Pink 18.0 5.0 5.0 8.0 37.0 1.0 -12.0 -0.667 White 1.9 0.0 0.0 1.9 4.0 0.0 -4.0 -2.105
What Next?
Follow @GrahamYapp on Twitter!  23 Step 4 sides left to visit to complete the tier, and hopefully another one ticked off next Saturday.