Sunday 6 August 2017

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.


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.


No comments:

Post a Comment