Vauxhall Motors Win, Zafira 'Nough

Hopperational Details
Date & Venue	Friday 8 March 2019 at The Offside Trust Stadium, Townfield, Northwich
Result	Barnton 0 Vauxhall Motors 2
Competition	NW Counties League Division One South (Step 6)
Hopstats	Number 682 on the lifetime list. Time to let other people make my destination decisions – this is the first game of the NW Counties groundhop.
Context
12th v 4th.  Barnton won their last game 5-0 and Vauxhall lost 2-1, so who knows what to predict here.  The Motormen won the reverse fixture 3-2 back in November.
In one sentence
Barnton put up a spirited fight and Motors needed a penalty to break the deadlock, but eventually the visitors scored a second from one of several decent chances to seal the win.
So what?
Vauxhall Motors can still dream of promotion, Barnton remain mid-table.
Match Report
The vast majority of people who would care about this result are actually here in a crowd of 272, so this will be brief.  On a heavy pitch and in intermittent bursts of rain, the two teams made a decent effort to create a contest.  Motors looked the most likely to score, but Barnton made their presence felt more and more as the half went on.  Barnton's green-clad keeper Aaron Lyons was the busier, his counterpart's orange top much cleaner at the end of the game. It needed a penalty after 35 minutes to break the deadlock.  Handball was given as a defender went to ground and slid.  David Webb scored from the spot, The deadlock is broken from the penalty spot shortly before half-time They almost added a second before the break as a striker narrowly failed to make contact with a driven cross.  In the second half, the pattern continued and Motors created several good chances.  Eventually one was converted, and George Hassell's name was duly added to the scoresheet.  Later on they hit the post too. The Barnton heads never dropped and the game became tetchy at times as strong challenges were occasionally mistimed on the increasingly tricky surface.  The Motormen held on easily enough and banked the points. A good start to the weekend hop, with a good range of beer and food options to keep the hoppers alive.
Pix
Barnton are in the black and white stripes.
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. Green loses to Orange, against the prediction. Pre-match Prediction based on Keeper Top Colour: Prediction: Home Win Was the prediction correct? No % of correct predictions so far 23 out of 38 (61%) 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. Full table to be recalculated next week.  In the meantime, here is the rank order as it stood before tonight's game, which will take Orange above Purple. PPG Red 2.286 Grey 1.535 Blue 1.508 Green 1.186 Fire Cracker 0.667 Maroon 0.600 Purple 0.381 Orange 0.221 Black -0.308 Radioactive Bile -0.391 Yellow -0.514 Pink -0.667 White -2.105
What Next?
Follow @GrahamYapp on Twitter!  A full day of northwesternness tomorrow.