Saints fans ask for very little. We just want to beat Wigan. Therefore losing to them 16-12 makes us sad.
I mean, I think we did very well given the number of children in our starting line up.
Of that starting 17, there are 4 players who made their debut this season!!!
And you know what really doesn't help when you have a team that's almost a quarter infants (and a couple of players not much post that stage)? When one of your senior players gets himself yellow carded in the first minute.
Matty Lees, give yourself a shake!
It being such a low-scoring game means there's no figures for the game. (Don't worry, I am adding some extra analysis at the end to make up for it.)
For the season to date, there may be starting to be a pattern of Saints scoring in minute 50-55.
19 players have now scored for Saints at any point this season.
Percival, the kicker, still leads the way.
Welsby is still ever-present when Saints score, present for all 153 point-scoring moments.
What does the matrix graph look like now?
The network graph looks weird.
I can't quite explain why Royle, Ritson and Paasi look like they're making a sub-community with Davies and Stephens. I know why Royle, Ritson and Paasi, because the few games they have played have been together, but I didn't think that they'd shared that many with Davies (Stephens yes, Davies, not so much).
This is one of the advantages of visualising the data.
The pattern of when Saints concede has reduced.
An ever-present when Saints score, Welsby has been ever-present when Saints concede.
The who-is-present-together when Saints concede matrix looks odd. Normally they go, darkest, paler, even paler, palest (from one side to the other). This one goes darkest, paler, palest, paler than paler not as pale as palest. It appears to be an effect of the same sort of sub-community formation seen in the "present together when Saints score" network graph.
The equivalent network diagram actually looks more reasonably than the point-scoring equivalent.
In this game, Saints hit 150 point-scoring moments (now 153) and point-conceding moments is still ~ half that (73) so I thought this would be a good time to look at that again.
As expected, the numbers have evened themselves out.
The player present for the least point-conceding moments relative to point-scoring moments is Percival at -6, followed by Mbye and Stephens at -4. Percival is a mixture of being taken off at minute 50 early in the season and a couple of cards and Mbye tends not to be the starting hooker in the big games (the ones Saints are more likely to concede more in).
Stephens is the one who intrigues me because he's a forward who has been given his debut this season, so those are happy numbers. (L will tell you I was excessively fond of Stephens even before this stat.)
Looking at it the other way (players present relatively more often when Saints concede than when they score) [and ignoring Robertson who has only one game], the only one with numbers >2 (which I am calling insignificant) are Delaney and Ritson and neither of those are explicable.
I'll keep an eye out on this stat going forward.