Bewdley Trumped by Westfields in the Cup

Hopperational details
Date & Venue	Saturday 5 August 2017 at Allpay Park, Hereford.
Result	Westfields 3 Bewdley Town 1
Competition	FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round
Hopstats	Ground Number 612 on my lifetime list, and I am here because a tweet from President Trump contained the word West, which therefore uniquely determined that Westfields, which also contains West, would be my pseudorandom choice today from 102 unvisited grounds. The details are in the blogpost that immediately precedes this.  Reaction on Twitter suggests that around a dozen people were mildly amused by this match-choice methodology.  The President will in due course look back at this as one of his better “decisions”, I feel sure.
Advice for the Hopperatic Society	Plan your car parking and look at a map before you travel.  This ground is tucked away in open parkland.  There is some limited parking, but I parked in the city centre and had an easy 15 minute stroll. Go past the Edgar Street stadium and then turn left.
Context
First competitive game of the season for both teams.  Step 5 Midland League plays Step 6 West Midlands Regional so the home side will start as favourites, especially as they have the experience of a splendid giantkilling run to the First Round Proper last season.
In one sentence
In the end, a straightforward Westfield win once a second goal had gone in early in the second half.
So what?
Westfields will travel to AFC Wulfrunians in two weeks in the Preliminary Round.
Match Report
Westfields gradually gained the first-half ascendancy but were made to work hard.  Alex Hainault saw a long-range effort tipped over spectacularly.  They eventually took the lead just before the interval with a low shot across the keeper by defender Matt Sysum.  Hainault added the second a few minutes after the restart with another low shot when freed by a neat backheel from Richard Graves.  It looked as if that would be that, and it certainly was with fifteen minutes left.  Substitute Carlos Moreira hammered home the rebound from his own shot after he had received the ball on the edge of the box from a corner.  Three well-worked and well-taken goals without reply until Pountney’s persistence paid off and he scored a stoppage-time consolation goal for the visitors. Westfields 3 (Sysum 41, Hainault 51, Moreira 75) Bewdley 1 (Pountney 90+1)
The “If Only…” Moment
If only Bewdley striker Lewis Pountney could have found the net rather than firing over, after his excellent movement had created the first real chance of the game with 11 minutes gone.
Ground Pix
Those big steel tanks belong to Heineken and I suspect they contain a billion fermenting apples.  Hereford is big in the world of cider production.
Match Pix
On This Day in Hopping History
5 August 2014 saw Spelthorne Sports win their first game at Step 5 with a 2-1 Combined Counties victory over Bedford Sports featuring a gazillion Chironomid midges. http://modushopperrandom.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/spelthorne-step-up.html
Goalkeeper Top Colour Stats
Today, orange beats green but neither has a clean sheet, and green still remains just ahead of  orange in mid-table.  For new readers, this is all because Petr Cech has or had an opinion that orange was best.  I will think about a statistical significance test at the end of the season. Results so far: 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 .1s and .5s are caused respectively by a non-matching sub keeper and a really annoying 50:50 top. P W D L GC CS Pts PPG Red 8.0 4.0 0.0 4.0 8.0 3.0 19.0 2.38 Blue 28.1 11.0 5.0 12.1 44.0 10.0 44.0 1.57 Maroon 4.0 2.0 1.0 1.0 6.0 1.0 6.0 1.50 Grey 39.5 19.0 8.0 12.5 64.5 11.0 55.5 1.41 Green 55.0 26.0 7.0 22.0 95.0 15.0 65.0 1.18 Orange 22.5 8.0 4.0 10.5 34.5 5.0 18.5 0.82 Purple 10.0 5.0 2.0 3.0 22.0 2.0 5.0 0.50 Yellow 24.0 7.0 6.0 11.0 46.0 5.0 6.0 0.25 Radioactive Bile 12.0 5.0 0.0 7.0 26.0 1.0 -6.0 -0.50 Pink 12.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 26.0 1.0 -8.0 -0.67 Black 5.0 1.0 3.0 1.0 14.0 0.0 -8.0 -1.60 White 1.9 0.0 0.0 1.9 4.0 0.0 -4.0 -2.11
What Next?
Watch @GrahamYapp on Twitter for details!  My priority grounds for this season will be AFC Fylde (to restore my 116 down to Step 1), Poole Town and Spennymoor Town (to restore my 160 down to Step 2) and then, at Step 3, Ashton United, Lancaster City, Merthyr Town, Shaw Lane, Tiverton Town, Warrington Town and Whitby Town to complete the 232 down to Step 3 for the first time.  I also hope, travel practicalities permitting, to go back to my blogroots and have as many random or randomish decisions as possible.  In the real world, I have now partly retired, at least for now (!), so I hope for more regular and reliable Saturday hopping time this season.

The President Decides

Greetings, everyone.  My hopping season begins a little later than some because last weekend’s sporting action was in a paternal role at the British Firefighter Challenge in Leicester, watching a Hertfordshire team including a certain Matthew Yapp picking up a bronze medal in the relay event.  Well done to them, and maybe a blogpost to come from next year’s event in Suffolk.

Meanwhile, I have 102 FA Cup ties at unvisited grounds on Saturday.  I just love the early rounds of this competition.  The HOME teams are shown in the table below.  President Trump’s Tweets will generate a shortlist according to the following rules.  It’s about time he made a decent decision.  I will decide how he will select from the shortlist once I know how the how short the shortlist is.  It might be very short, or it could still be quite long for a shortlist, even though I won’t change the name.  You still here?  OK, then, here’s how it works.

    1)      If his first tweet following this post contains any words that are part of a team name, then those team(s) go straight on to the shortlist and rule 2 does not apply.  If it turns out to be a shortlist of one, then that is that, job done, I’m going there.  If the tweet does NOT contain any words that fit this rule, go to rule 2 and count letters.

    

    2)      Take the 10^th letter of the tweet.  Look for teams whose names begin with that letter.  If there is one or more, we have a shortlist and the process ends.  If there are none, go to the 20^th letter.  If necessary, repeat with 30^th, 40^th … go back to 9^th,19^th …. etc etc until one or more teams have been pseudorandomly selected.  Then stand by.

The last tweet was at about 2.00pm Thursday UK time and began, “Our relationship with Russia…”.  So now we wait for the next one.

102 Unvisited Home Teams for 5 August 2017

Abbey Rangers	Irlam
AFC Mansfield	Kimberley MW
AFC St Austell	Kirby Muxloe
Amesbury Town	Kirkley & Pakefield
Ashington	Knaphill
Athersley Recreation	Litherland Remyca
Barnoldswick Town	Little Common
Billingham Town	Loxwood
Birstall United	Lydney Town
Boston Town	Maine Road
Bottesford Town	Newhaven
Bradford Town	Newmarket Town
Bridlington Town	Newport (IW)
Brimscombe & Thrupp	Newton Aycliffe
Brislington	Oadby Town
Brocton	Padiham
Bromsgrove Sporting	Parkgate
Buckland Athletic	Penrith AFC
Camberley Town	Plymouth Parkway
Cammell Laird 1907	Pontefract Collieries
Charnock Richard	Rainworth MW
Cheddar	Ringwood Town
Chessington & Hook United	Rochester United
Chipping Sodbury Town	Royal Wootton Bassett Town
Christchurch	Runcorn Linnets
Clevedon Town	Runcorn Town
Clipstone	Sevenoaks Town
Coleshill Town	Shaftesbury
Congleton Town	Sheppey United
Consett AFC	Shepton Mallet AFC
Corinthian	Shildon
Coventry Sphinx	Squires Gate
Coventry United	Street
Dunkirk	Sunderland RCA
East Preston	Swaffham Town
Eastbourne Town	Team Northumbria
Fairford Town	Team Solent
Fakenham Town	Thackley
Farnham Town	Thatcham Town
Felixstowe & Walton United	Walsall Wood
Framlingham Town	Washington
Glebe	Wellingborough Whitworths
Guisborough Town	Wellington AFC
Hailsham Town	Wells City
Hamworthy United	Westfields
Hanley Town	Whitchurch United
Harrowby United	Whitstable Town
Hassocks	Wolverhampton Casuals
Horley Town	Wolverhampton SC
Horndean	Woodley United
Hullbridge Sports	Worthing United

UPDATE

We have a result!

Applying rule 1 gets us nothing as far as the words "See", "you", "tonight" and "Huntington" are concerned but then "West" causes the search box to light up uniquely at Westfields!  No second stage required because the shortlist is as short as it can be while still being a list.

So on Saturday I will be heading back to Herefordshire, the ancestral county of this branch of the Yapp family, for the FA Cup tie between Westfields and Bewdley Town.  Thanks, Mr President, you made a clear decision.  Great!