FL2: Hereford v Torquay 5th May 2012

Jon


A disappointing afternoon as far as events on the field were concerned, but at least there were a few light hearted moments to be enjoyed elsewhere.

In order to be granted permission to attend this important game I had to agree to incorporate it into a family holiday & so we travelled up midweek to stay in Ross On Wye.

After touring around the Hereford & Worcestershire countryside for a few days prior to Saturday we'd become quite adept at recognising the preferred attire of the local landed gentry.

The younger members of my party who wanted to come along to the game couldn't recognise many of our players, let alone some of our celebrity fans. Therefore I suppose it was unsurprising when one of them, on seeing a figure resplendent in what appeared from a distance to be a waxed Barbour jacket ask quizzically: "Why's that Hereford fan coming into our stand?"

Luckily I could put them right & quickly explained " No, no children, that's Squire Budleigh, he's one of us....just more important"

Five minutes into the game & with everyone settled into their seats I thought I'd attempt to take a photograph of proceedings, but just as I pressed the shutter a blur of green obliterated the lens. "What stupid *@$@@**d walked straight in front of me" I started to bellow, before a young hand was hastily tapping me on the shoulder and saying "Sshhhhh...that was Squire Budleigh"....and to my amazement, when viewing the ruined picture it was indeed the great man himself.




Unable to wait for the final whistle, Budleigh was again making a better door than a window as the game drew to an end. Forgivable I suppose, as although we were staying in the area for a few more days, others were naturally keem to start on their journey homeward.

At full time the local yobbos invaded the pitch & the local constabulary attempted to contain them in one half. No attempts by the Torquay fans to go looking for a confrontation...or so i thought.. until I spotted Budleigh issue the instruction "Stand aside my good man" while brushing past the nearest steward & heading for the pitch !

Goading the home fans by initially pretending to hide being the goal net , it all threatened to turn nasty. We covered the eyes of the children & ushered them out of the stadium, keen that they wouldn't witness the possible 'barbour'ous events that might be about to unfold.

Joe

Quality post BUT with one fatal flaw !! To suggest that Squire Budleigh would look to purchase alcoholic refreshment for any one is a total fairy tale.

The Squire has short arms and DEEP pockets !!!

LOL

James, I think you've contradicted yourself on this thread.

You seem to say that "the table never lies" and so we must have a "better" squad of players than the nineteen teams we finished above.

By the same logic, we did not have as "good" a squad of players as the four teams that finished above us.

In a free market, with all things being equal, you would expect more expensively-assembled squads to be stronger. You would expect clubs with bigger gates, and cheats like Crawley, to be able to assemble squads more expensively.

That Swindon, Shrewsbury, Crawley and Southed pipped us over an entire season is entirely logical. That we finished above so many "big" clubs is not. That is down to the management team and the players doing us proud.

It's an insult to their integrity and professionalism to have you bleating on here about how they let us down. If their efforts have not been enough to convince you to support them, that is your choice. I'll be right behind the boys at Cheltenham, as will the vast majority of the Yellow Army - even if a handful of whingers don't have the stomach for it.

We were VERY NEARLY good enough to get promoted automatically. In fact our points tally would have got us promoted more often than not.

Maybe we'll be promoted through the play-offs maybe we won't.

Joe... another one of your fantastic takes on a situation.

I feel I would like to expain my reasoning for walking around the pitch both before and after the game (having thought I had managed to remain unseen!) but realise the futility of this as I couldn't come up with anything like your explanation. It would also confirm the musings of the two other posters who have made comment, namely I was after a free glass of vino!

I'm going to add this to my folder that also contains the wonderful Argyle sighting story of yours... (are you stalking me!)

That’s just about the measure of it for me as well. And I’m now going to take the excuse to quote a few statistics.

You can, as always, drag up all sorts of numbers about any season. My starting point this year is to show that, with the wisdom of hindsight, we can split this season into three parts: the first fourteen games, the middle twenty-seven and the last five. Confused? Look at this:

Games 1-14 (up to Southend away): played 14; points 15

Games 15-41 (Wimbledon home to Accrington home): played 27; points 63

Games 42-46 (Oxford away onwards): played 5; points 3.

I suspect you can do something broadly similar for most teams, most seasons. For it’s probably true that relatively few campaigns see a truly even accumulation of points throughout. For instance our 2010/11 season - the one that finished at Old Trafford - saw a twenty-one game spell of relegation form followed by a sixteen-match run that was to automatic promotion standards.

This season, if you did an extrapolation, the first fourteen games would have amounted to just over forty-nine points for the whole season. That would have placed us around 19th.

By contrast those middle twenty-seven games would equate to more than 107 points over the full season; fourteen more than Swindon managed.

That’s interesting. But only to a point for we know that seasons are played over forty-six games rather than twenty-seven. Thereafter it’s semantics and, indeed, there may also be other examples of teams in this division showing decent “bursts” of championship-winning form (albeit not for such a sustained period).

But, in the historical context, I suspect this amounted to one of the finest, sustained run of results in our history. I think Jon concluded that, after around sixteen games, we’d accumulated a club record tally of points over such a sequence of games. Incredibly results continued to be excellent for another ten or eleven games beyond that point.

Now for the contentious bit. After such a storming run I can see the temptation to argue that such a team could be expected to have the wherewithal to gain, allowing for an inferior goal difference, the seven points from five games that would done the trick. It doesn’t sound much when you say it like. One scenario would have seen this achieved by winning the home games against Southend and Crewe. Each, you'd contend, being "marginal games" that could have been victories.

Interesting conjecture; spilt milk.

But there's another statistic that I can’t help leave alone. For, as absolutely wonderful as that long-run proved to be - and I thought the team was marvellous throughout it - I suspect we could never quite ignore just how many games were won by the single goal. That’s not being curmudgeonly or churlish (wins are wins are wins); it’s a fact. Fifteen single-goal victories out of the sixteen since mid-November with just the 4-1 win at Burton breaking the sequence.

That, I suspect, adds a degree of credence to the theory that this was the year when - through our own sterling efforts - we were (as Jon says) “actually very good at turning marginal games into victories”. Now imagine if five of those wins were draws. That reduces us to seventy-one points which may have got us into the play-offs. A sixth draw would not have done so.

But we did get those wins and we did bloody well getting them. That’s why, after brilliantly managing to turn so many “marginal games” into victories I can’t get too angry that we didn’t do it another couple of times. Disappointed, yes, of course. And, as at Wimbledon and Hereford, there's always a dip somewhere.....

(I’ve not yet seen this week’s Herald Express so apologies if Dave Thomas may have quoted similar figures. I’m just using those I’ve mulled over during the week).

Great fun though it is extrapolating, I still find that a surprising number of people overlook the Bodin factor !

I'll use Barton's first cut off point, the 4-1 defeat at Southend as being around about the time that it was decided that the system needed to change. Quite which was the first match in which Damon Lathrope played as a deep lying / holding midfielder hasn't quite been agreed on, but that's not too important as there was no guarantee that it would work from the word go, as the players need a few games to adapt.

Shoring up the defence is one thing, but is not the other side of the equation that you have weakened the attack ? Well we all remember Barcelona passing the ball around neatly against Chelsea, keeping possession for ever & a day, but really only having one player who could go past players & through a defence with the ball.

Not up to Lionel Messi's standards quite yet, but Billy could do something similar for us. He could carve through single handedly, create, & score a few himself. An invaluable weapon to have in your armoury if you're not committing as many men to attack.

Once I'd started extrapolating, I discovered that in just the 8 league games that Billy started after that Southend match, we hit 4 goals against Wimbledon, & 3 against both Crewe & Argyle.

You'll see why Ling was so desperate to try & get Bodin back here when you look at the 22 league matches since Bodin left us. If it wasn't for the freak 4-1 win at Burton we would never have scored more than 2 goals in any of those 22 games.

The passing game remained the same, the resolute defending remained the same. The single goal victories kept the points coming , but the cutting edge had been blunted.

Everything Billy Bodin touches turns to the play-offs at the very minimum this season (Swindon,Torquay,Crewe).

For someone who played a big part in making our new system of play such a success, & who without his contribution this season I'm convinced we'd be significantly lower in the league table, Billy deserves a lot more recognition than the boos he received from some of our fans a few weeks ago.

The interpolation of loan players for example?

They’ll soon be calling Paul Buckle an excessive interpolator….



That's the spirit, Joe. Always a pleasure to see statistics so carefully selected and used to such devastating effect.

Now here’s a question to anyone who may possess the appropriate spreadsheet. Are these seasonal club records?

Taiwo Atieno - twenty-six league substitute appearances in a season; twenty-nine in all competitions.

Lathaniel Rowe-Turner - twenty-one league appearances without a start.

These figures taken from www.soccerbase.com/teams/team.sd?team_id=2589 (squad stats).

Can I also ask who, hoping the figures are quickly available, has made the most all-time substitute appearances for the club in all competitions? Much obliged if that information can be supplied.