I have returned to my Charles Reep Project this week.
I have been re-reading Charles and Bernard’s 1968 paper, Skill and Chance in Association Football.
I have been focussing on their data. This led me to a revision of the data they shared as Table 2 in 1968 as Table 1 in Charles, Richard (Pollard) and Bernard’s 1971 paper, Skill and Chance in Ball Games.
As I re-read the papers, I was thinking about how we might visualise these data now.
I have transcribed the data from the 1968 paper and the 1971 re-working of Table 2 (as Table 1 in 1971) onto this Google Sheet.
I have created a GitHub repository for these data.
The following files are available:
- An xlsx file with five tabs (four tables from 1968 and Table 1 from 1971)
- Table 1 (1968)
- Table 2 (1968)
- Table 1 (1971)
- Table 3 (1968)
- Table 4 (1968)
I am hopeful these raw data might be of interest to a range of people interested in the origins of conversations about goal scoring in association football.
On re-reading the 1968 and 1971 papers, it struck me that their methodologies and data could form the focus of a short open course in which we might explore:
- Real-time observation
- Notation
- Lapsed-time observation
- Data presentation
- Data re-presentation
- Visualisation
- Impact of research on practice
It would be fascinating to link Charles’ contemporaries with present day practice … and add to our understanding of performance.
Photo Credit
Sheffield Wednesday (Sheffield History)
Burnley (Burnley FC History)
