Stallions vs Accies

Little red Paul guards his line

Billed as the battle of the future vs the past, or alternatively 'we will give you a strip if you surrender the 6 points'

The picks of the archive related to Stallions vs Accies is Rauru's brilliantly titled post 'Screw You Accies'. The comments contain a very full match report by Pony Joe.

http://unistallions.blogspot.co.nz/2011/04/screw-you-accies.html

Then there is 'An Epic Victory'
http://unistallions.blogspot.co.nz/2011/07/epic-victory.html
This includes this comment from Robin: I think that assist for Paddy's first goal was Lloyd. I remember because as I was running back to half way, Graham held his hand out to high-five Lloyd and I high-fived Graham against his will. Is that wrong?

A fire up pre game message from a couple of season's ago with the great comment: 'Accies are dicks'
http://unistallions.blogspot.co.nz/2011/07/fire-up-for-accies.html

There goes my Quenelle celebration

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/sport/9923544/Player-sent-off-over-monkey-noises

Season opener - Stallions 4: Eastbourne 3

My first game in goal since the dim, distant tines of 2012 and I end up as Pony. Typical.

I'm not convinced there is huge shame in letting in 3 goals, but when all 3 are scored in pretty much the centre of the goal perhaps it's right to start asking questions.

Still, to begin at the beginning; the Stallions were forewarned that they were stepping up a grade by arriving in our usual piecemeal fashion to find an opposition already kitted up and going through some drills.  It was a gloriously warm afternoon.  Those of us with more years under our belts and still quietly rubbing our summer bellies (some bigger than others) were sure that their warm-up looked more strenuous than we were prepared to be once the game started.  Aaron confirmed the tone by ambling onto the pitch 30 seconds before kick-off, hoofing a ball towards the corner-flag and claiming "that's the warm-up done".

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Eastbourne started marginally the brighter of the teams, stringing some decent attacking moves together.  Some heroic, but unsung, keeping and last-ditch defending managed to keep them at bay for about the first 20 minutes.  Then they struck.  A piercing ball through the attacking left-hand channel set their striker clear - he fired a good low cross across the face of the goal.  Paddy, rather pathetically, failed to cover all three of the players they had queuing up for the tap in.

After that, Lloyd and Heath started to assert themselves in the middle of the park and the Stallions played themselves back into the game  A deserved equaliser arrived after some smart interplay between Lloyd and Bakkie allowed space for the cross to be delivered - Rauru rising majestically to head past an exposed keeper.  The second came from a promising looking Eastbourne attack.  Although Rauru seems hell-bent on denying his brother any credit, it was actually a trademark Tangihaere punt of a clearance that caused panic in the opposition defence and helped set young skyWalker on his way. A very cool run and finish into the bottom corner put the Stallions ahead.

Somewhere in there - in keeping with the free-flowing Stallions philosophy - an interchange between Tangi and Joe resulted in a rather optimistic high bouncing back pass.  As the ball spun wildly off the turf, I realised it was either let it hit my arm or watch it bounce into the net (a trick I was keeping up my sleeve for later).  The indirect free-kick that followed came to nothing.  The opinion that I should probably have been sent off for stopping a certain goal was put down to needless pedantry.

Second half started badly.  We felt really flat and Eastbourne capitalised.  Their strikers were given way too much room on the edge of our area and someone found the space to expertly curl a shot just inside the far post.  So fierce was the effort that my exclamation that it had "gone past me and into the goal" was cut off after the first word.  Momentum on their side, Eastbourne took the lead pretty soon afterwards with a simple header from a corner.  A nice header, but a combination of defenders and keeper maybe could have done better.

The Stallion moment arrived not long afterwards.  Another well weighted through ball found their striker clear on the left.  I came out and got their just after the him.  I didn't really see what happened but apparently the ball (after hitting me - yes, I'm claiming a save) crashed into the crossbar and back out to one of their players.  With the opportunity to pick his spot, a wonderful goal-line header from Tangi kept their lead to one.

After that, there was some handbags.  Poor Heath got bullied by a skinny 16 year old.  The instigator didn't quite get what he deserved - their explanation that "he's only young and small" doesn't really cut it.  If you're old enough to kick someone on the ground you're old enough to suffer the consequences.  Hopefully someone had words with him after.

Still, the whole thing worked to our advantage.  We got angry, they got flustered and it started to show.  Free-kicks were picked up in positions where we could capitalise on Paddy's excellent delivery and our superiority in the air.  First came a flick from Ra into the path of the tireless GI Joe who gleefully tucked it away.  Within moments, we got the lead we weren't to surrender - Lloyd bundling another free kick in with a combination of head, shoulders, knees and toes.

Another "testing" back pass from Joe caused momentary panic when my excellent control again may have resulted the ball hitting my arm.  This one was entirely accidental and the ref made the brave call to pretend he didn't see it.

Nice work Stallies.  A winning start to life in Capital 5 and some optimism for what prove to be a slightly sterner test next week against the whippersnappers of the Accies.

The kids are alright

So experience smashes innocence again. A great win to start off the new season. I'll leave the match report to our pony, but perhaps leave you with a few Heard on the Sidelines:

After Joe had held the tango a little too long with his marker:
'Let go of him you dirty old man'.

To Paddy:
'C'mon, you are 28 years old'

Heath, after being told the age of the opponent he was smashing:
'How am I supposed to know he's only 16'.

A couple of drinks afterwards where the following awards were presented:

Stallion: Tangihaere - that clearance from the line - which unbelievably he tried to pass on to Tom who apparently had blocked the angle with such precision (by which time we all got bored of listening to Tangihaere).

Pony: Paul - I'm not exactly sure of this, but others thought it was hilarious - something about saying the ball was going wide and it sailed into the centre of goal.  Look forward to the match report, especially the reliving of Joe's back passes!

Did I get the assists right?

STALLION

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellington/9907310/Survivor-finds-his-voice

Always an inspiration Nick, its going to be great to run around a field with you again this season.

It was decided last night you still have the best Stallions goal celebration ever.

Was that the biggest photo on the front page of the paper ever?

Lloyd shops for the new season

Lloyd stats:
Preseason games: 1
Bleeding from the head: 1

We have been here before right, from Carrick's last season's match report vs Brooklyn:
'Everyone put their bodies on the line. Lloyd also put his face in the way of an ambitious bicycle kick from Brooklyn's striker. Off to the blood bin, a bit of whiskey and water, and Lloyd was good to go again.'

Can't say he ain't committed. Bet he cried with that tetanus shot though.

Got nothing on this guy though:

\



Or this naked dude:

Unistallions, bringing the blood face to Cap 5 in 2014.

LBWTF

So, I got given out LBW for a duck no the 2nd ball of the innings last Saturday. In my last game for the cricketing Stallions. I don't often enjoy getting out LBW, but there was a few things about this one that really stuck in my craw. Firstly, the bowler was left arm over the wicket. This should make it hard to get an LBW as:

• The ball must pitch on the line of at least leg stump, and
• Be still hitting the wickets

which is not an easy task starting with that angle. As a result I've always thought that if you are a decent way down the track you should be pretty much immune to LBWs for left arm over, unless:

• The ball is very full, and/or
• There is significant movement back in

This ball was neither full (I was hit adjacent to my left knee), nor did it (to the best of my recollection) deviate especially much. However, the umpire was adament that not only did the ball pitch in line, but it also hit me in front of middle and off, and moveover that it was "plumb".

I was still dirty about it the following day, so I thought I would do some analysis. Were my beliefs flawed?

I want to start by saying that the umpire:

• Only has a split second to consider a number of factors
• Only rarely has to consider height a factor on Wellington pitches, albeit many balls did bounce over the stumps on this deck.
• May have a different view of my underlying assumptions.

This has been written completely without malice and as an academic exercise.

I started with basic assumptions about the pitch; dimensions from the graphic below which came from Wikipedia.

I also noted from this article that:

• The wicket is 23cm wide
• The stumps protrude to 71.1cm above the ground

For the point of impact I used the following:

• For across the pitch, stated impact was in front of middle and off. I reckoned this to be 1/3rd of the way from the edge of off stump, i.e. 7.67cm from the edge of off stump
• Up the pitch is a little harder to estimate. I take guard with my back foot usually 30-50cm in front of the crease, putting my front foot about 1 metre out from the crease. I was hit on the front pad of my front foot. While I was certainly not playing the ball on the back foot, I hardly got a stride in either. I've used 1 metre from the crease for my calculations, and I think that is a fair estimate.

So, assuming a totally straight trajectory and impact on Middle and off, where could the ball have been bowled from?

I used FreeCad to create the above diagram; the files I made are downloable here. To explain:

• The Red box is the 'vitrual mat' which goes between both sets of stumps.
• The Blue box is the distance from the point of impact to the popping crease
• The Black lines indicate the range a ball could have been delivered from, hit the impact point and gone on to hit the stumps

The answer is that a straight ball could have been delivered from anywhere from up to 41.28cm outside of leg stump at the bowlers end, hit the batsman at the stated position and then go on to cip the edge of off stump.

OK, so how about the pitching in line with leg stump? First, some more observations:

• As mentioned previously, I was hit adjacent to my knee. The measured height of this is 54cm.
• Given this height, it is safe to conclude that this was not what is generally regarded as a Full Length Ball, i.e. within 4m of the batsman. It is more reasonable to conclude that it was a Good Length Ball, bouncing between 4-7m from the batman.

The fathest out ball still hitting off stump crosses the leg stump line 4.54m from the batsman, so it is in this zone.

However, the height causes other issues:

• If the ball was fuller, the implication is that it has gained height quickly (and will therefore continue to do so). Given impact 54cm up, the top of the 71.1cm of the stumps could easily be missed.
• If the ball was shorter, meaning height would not be such an issue for LBW, this then narrows our possible delivery point.

Investigating that second point further, if the ball had pitched on leg stump at the end of the Good length, i.e. 7m from the batsman, it would have:

• had to have been bowled from not more than 11.2cm outside of leg stump to still go through the impact point. 
• hits the wickets 2.81cm from the outside edge of off stump

Still do-able, but quite tight indeed given that this is the release point of the ball, and that parts of the bowler's body could generally be expected to be closer to the stumps as part of the action.

In conclusion, it is possible to be correctly adjudged LBW to a:

• non deviating, 
• good length ball 
• from a left arm bowler 
• even if you are hit on the front pad well down the wicket

However, the bowler MUST deliver from very close in to the stumps, and even then the window that needs to be hit is very small.