500 scorelines (more football data nerdery)

I freely admit I'm a football data nerd. I've blogged previously about my 'Book of Days' project and also how a football app has influenced my matchgoing. 

Last week I clocked up my 500th football match since I started logging going to football matches in 1992. This seemed like a large enough round number to provide a dataset for me to review to see which scorelines are the ones I've seen the most. I've gridded them up and colour coded them to show incidence rates.

It's a simple grid - 'home' scores are down the left hand side and 'away' scores are across the top. 

The data

There are some caveats about the data. I excluded one game because it was abandoned after 15 minutes (when the floodlights at Jenner Park blew a fuse and robbed me of a twofer!) so technically there are only 499 games on the grid. The results are either after a full 90 minutes, or at the end of extra time in cup games that went to extra time. Penalty shoot outs aren't included.

I haven't divided the games up by type (league, cup, friendly). The 500 games in the dataset include results from games seen in all four countries of the UK and one game in the USA. It includes international matches, including three Olympic matches. There are two women's games.

The results

The obvious finding is that it's hard to score goals in football so it is far more likely to see a game where each side only scores 1 or 2 goals. I've seen marginally more games where the away team won 1-0 than games that the home team won 1-0. I've seen exactly the same number of games that finished in 2-1 victories for both the home and away teams. And the most likely score for any game I go to see is 1-1.

Where the numbers get more ragged things get more interesting. I've never seen a home side win 4-3, but I have seen three away teams win 3-4. I've seen teams win away 3-5 and 4-5 (which was a very memorable Poole Town game against Paulton Rovers), but I've not seen home wins by the reversed scorelines. 

The proper outliers are all memorable. The highest scoring game I've ever been to is the 16-0 victory for Cardiff Corinthians in the Welsh Cup last season. It's all out on its own on the grid. The 8-3 result was at the tail end of last season when Barry Town thrashed Afan Lido. The 2-7 is from this season - another Poole Town victory. (Poole seem to be doing their bit to keep my scorelines looking interesting.)

I will update this when I hit my next worthwhile matchgoing milestone. Maybe by then I will have seen a game end 4-3. If I can add to the smattering of weird scorelines on the fringes too, that will be a bonus.

How apps alter behaviour - personal anecdata

I like keeping a record of which football matches I see. I blogged about this last year. I like to use an app called Futbology - as featured in my review of last season - which acts as a way of finding games to go to, recording games I've been to, and marks various milestones along the way. This includes awarding 'badges' for noteworthy things like seeing the same team a certain number of times or attending games in different countries. 

I noticed I was due to get a badge - my 450th game attended overall - and I discovered something strange. I was reluctant to 'waste' the badge on a random game. I had a plan to watch Shrewsbury play in Portsmouth at the end of October and found myself planning to use that game to trigger getting the badge for 450 games. 

That meant I passed up the opportunity to go to a couple of games - not in itself a bad thing. Like any interest it's easy to get a bit obsessed and a football free weekend like the one I had in the middle of October is probably quite healthy. And, fortunately, everything aligned for me to hit the 450 game milestone at the game I wanted to hit it at. 

The reason I'm blogging about this, however, is because I realised that my relationship with this app had subtly changed. Before the app I never kept a record of my total games. I would not have known I was reaching 450 games. 

Knowing that I was reaching that total altered my game-going habits. Indirectly, the app shaped my choices. This is an example of how technology shapes our lives through unintended influences. My behaviour change on a micro-level is fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but this kind of influence is being replicated in dozens of ways that we might not even notice. 

Our relationship with technology could well have an evolutionary impact on humans generally and we wouldn't necessarily know. I've blogged previously about how we outsource memories (referencing Futbology!) and the idea that we have digital doppelgangers who will outlive us as shadows on the web. I don't find that overly worrying or anything. It's just something I'm noticing.  It's fascinating being part of the overall evolution into a digital species. 

Blood Bowl Match Report - Ogres and skaven and dwarves, oh my!

This was the first time that Bryan and I had played Blood Bowl with new 'Second Season' rules. The main change has been the addition of a skill relating to how well a player can pass the ball. (Earlier this year I bought the new Second Season box set - read more here!)

Bryan has a dwarf team, which he has started painting but hasn't officially named yet. One of the possible names is the Dinas Delvers, so I've decided to go with that for now. I played with the skaven team with the addition of an ogre. Last time we played, my giant rats got really badly stomped on so I was hoping an ogre would give them a bit of protection.

Scrimmage line melee

What I didn't bank on was some of the dwarves (the "Trollslayer" characters) having an attribute called 'Dauntless', which basically took away the advantage of my ogre's higher level of strength. That led to a lot of shoving back and forth on the line of scrimmage and at one point my ogre ended up flat on his back.   

Ogre down!

MATCH REPORT

Dinas Delvers 0-1 Bayside Vermin

(Match abandoned at half time as it was getting late and both managers were tired!)

Because we played the new season 2 rules which meant we had to look a load of things up and that slowed us down. This meant we only played one half, of 8 turns each. 

There is a new kick off procedure and you have to roll to decide what happens while the ball is in the air and how far it deviates from where it's supposed to go. It then took a few turns for any of the players to actually get the ball under control. To pick it up, a player has to perform an "agility roll" - throw the dice and see if they score the target number needed. The Vermin kicked off, and then various Delvers fumbled trying to pick up the ball. 

In this version of the game, your team go ends if (when) you mess up a dice roll. So every time a Delver failed an agility roll, the skaven could get closer to where the ball had ended up. Eventually one of the Vermin's pacy Gutter Runners eluded the attentions of the Delver defence and made a beeline for the ball. 

Eyes on the ball

Then it was a sprint to the end zone for the Gutter Runner and a glorious touchdown!

SCORE!!!

As coaches, Bryan and I haven't got round to naming our team members and actually keeping any kind of record of what each individual player does. Over the course of a league campaign, Blood Bowl players earn Experience Points (XP) if they manage to do something like score a touchdown. However, any XP earned by this particular Gutter Runner would have been cancelled out, because on the next play he got pushed into the crowd and knocked out by violent fans!

With limited turns left before half time, the Delvers attempted a long pass over the heads of most of the players. The dice roll for the pass failed, but the Vermin player attempting to intercept couldn't couldn't catch it cleanly, instead knocking the ball astray. That meant more agility rolls. 

On the Vermin's very last turn of the half, with the ball loose and for the taking, the Vermin player failed an agility test! This was very annoying, as agility is about the only skill skaven players really have. But, that was it, he fluffed the pick up and that was it for the night.

Overall, this was a great learning experience. The dwarf team has some useful attributes and although the ogre didn't really achieve much, none of the skaven players were killed this time! Which in the crazy world of Blood Bowl counts as progress!

Unboxing Blood Bowl - the Second Season

A few years after it got rebooted, Blood Bowl has had a revamp. I didn't know that had happened, until I took advantages of the pandemic restrictions slowly lifting, to have a nose around one of my favourite shops, Firestorm Games. There on a display were the new Blood Bowl items. I asked how much the Starter Set would cost, and discovered it was discounted. 

So, um, yeah...

I appreciate you might have questions. I have the starter set released in 2016. Did I really need this new one? Well, it came with the new Second Season rulebook, which costs over £25 on its own. It also came with two new teams, a Star Player for each team, a "Big Guy" for each team, and two referees. Plus all the dice and kit you need to play the game. It felt like good value, if I was going to get the rulebook anyway.

The first thing I saw when I opened the box was a pile of plastic sprues. Lovely, lovely plastic sprues, pregnant with possibilities. The clipping, the building, the glueing, the painting!

They are colour coded - the red sprues are the players for the Imperial Nobility team. They are all humans. Their backstory is that they are rich noblemen who want to play Blood Bowl, so they are kitted up ready to play, along with their retainers and bodyguards. Also on their side is an ogre, to give them a bit of muscle and protection. 

The dark green sprues are the Black Orc team, which is a mix of large orcs and goblins. They also have a troll on their side. The models are all new for this edition of Blood Bowl, apart from the ogre and the troll, which were released shortly after the previous edition of the game.

There's a blue sprue too, with referees; one elf, one dwarf.

The referees are biased and you can buy them off before the start of the game to help your team win!

Underneath the sprues is a sheet that prevents the pointy bits of the models from scratching the rest of the contents of the box. Underneath the sheet is the rulebook and the other bits needed for the game, including the bases for the players.

In with the rulebook are two "cheat sheets". These aren't actually about cheating, they are just reference guides to keep handy to remind you about the phases of the game and the rules that matter the most.

There is a set of dice for each team. The symbols mean different outcomes for when players try and tackle each other.

There are dug-outs to go next to the pitch, where spare players sit waiting for their chance to play and injured players are placed when removed from play.

Severely injured players go in the bit with a handy coffin ready, just in case they don't make it...

The game is backwards compatible to an extent. The teams from the previous edition can be used in the Second Season, which was a relief to my team of Skaven (who also have an ogre in their line up). Here's a picture of them from when I painted them last year.

With the two teams that came in the previous starter set, the two that came in this one, and the two extra ones I have acquired along the way, I now have enough teams to run my own league. I am looking forward to being actually able to meet up with my Blood Bowl buddy, Bryan, and play a few games. It could be a very bloody winter!

Let the mayhem recommence

After a gap of eight years, Friday night saw my friend Bryan and me doing battle again in Blood Bowl. For those who don’t know, this is a Games Workshop Warhammer-American Football mash-up that was reasonably popular in the late 80s. Two teams – in this case one of humans plus assorted other races, and on of orks – scrap it out in a table-top game. It’s pure nerdy fun.


Neither of us could believe it had been eight years since our last Blood Bowl encounter, but the dates on the old team-sheets in the box don’t lie. (Yes, there are team-sheets. I told you it was nerdy.) I’d freshened up the teams a bit – renaming them the Bromfield Street Berserkers and the Grangetown Greenskins. As per usual, I took control of the mainly-human team (the Berserkers), while Bryan ‘managed’ the ork team (the Greenskins).

Despite Bryan claiming the dice gods weren’t on his side, the first touchdown took ages to happen, mainly because we were trying to get used to the rules – not easy after such a hiatus. The first score went to the Beserkers – new team member Lex Kevlar scoring it to cap a man-of-the-match performance that included winning all five of his first five tackles or blocks and killing an opponent in the process. (Yes, it’s that kind of game.)

The Berserkers went close again with only two heroic tackles preventing further scores with the ball literally a yard from the scoreline. The throws were going well – Blitzer Gudmund Halo putting together a ‘long bomb’ at one point to the Elf Catcher, Diamos Swift, who had run clear. Swift was one of the victims of a heroic tackle, taken out just as he was about to score. As a consolation, the tackler was stretchered off, stunned.

But then the Greenskins fought back with a good rushing play down the right wing. A successful Blocker-to-Blocker pass got them into the endzone and back on level terms. (Blockers subtract one to dice rolls for both throwing and catching to the pass was an excellent roll.)

The favour of the dice gods had obviously turned. Two Beserkers, including one of the fearsome Dwarf Blockers got injured trying to make extra yards to take possession of the spilled football. Then the other Dwarf Blocker was injured in a tackle after inflicting several injuries on opponents. Both Blitzers went down in the same round of Blocks and with the Beserker defence horribly incapacitated or out of position the board was free for a Greenskin counter-attack.

The vulnerable Beserkers were only saved from defeat by time being called at that point. Both sides finished honours even, insofar as there is any honour in Blood Bowl of course.

1-1 was probably a fair result, but both sides will feel they could have won the game. But that at least raises the stakes for the next time these rivals meet.