NWCFL statistician Kevin Lawton had cast his eye over the 2018/19 First Division North season and has come up with all the key stats.
Division One North brought together a number of news teams to the NWCFL for the 18/19 season and cut down on the miles involved.
380 matches were contested, 279 resulted in home wins, 138 in away wins and 62 in draws, of which 6 were no score games.
The league saw the onion bag stretched many times, with 886 home goals and 729 away goals, an average of 4.25 per game. Longridge Town fans saw an average of 4.95 goals per game and the Daisy Hill faithful were not far behind on 4.93. The highest number in a single game occurred when Longridge won 11-2 at Holker OB in September – also the highest number of goals scored by a single team (next was Lower Breck with 8 in an 8-2 win at AFC Blackpool in February).
TURNER TREBLE WINS TITLE FOR TOWN........ Match Report to follow #UptheRidge pic.twitter.com/DObzOLHwKu
— Longridge Town FC (@LongridgeTownFC) April 27, 2019
The recipient of the most own goals was Lower Breck, with four coming their way, Nelson was next with three. Twenty-two were scored in total, Cleator Moor and Bacup kindly gifting three to their opponents.
When it came to clean sheets it was tight at the top, Avro just pipped Prestwich Heys by 13 to 12, closely followed by Garstang with 11. Atherton LR and Daisy Hill managed just one each.
Longridge put together the best unbeaten run, with 14 games in total from August to early November, AFC Darwen ending the run with a 2-1 win at Longridge.
The highest league attendance was the 451 who saw Longridge beat Avro 3-0 in late February, whilst the lowest was the twenty-three diehards who witnessed Shelley win 2-1 Ashton Town in October. When it came to home average attendance, Longridge topped with 178, next was the 122 at Cleator Moor and the 116 at AFC Liverpool.
When we look at player stats, three players started all 38 league games. William Kitchen at Garstang and Daniel Wilkinson and Lee Dovey, both at Longridge. Josh Molloy (Lower Breck) and Antony Leech (Shelley) missed just one game. Well done to you all.
The ‘SuperSub’ 2018/19 crown goes to Anthony Lyons at AFC Liverpool with 17 appearances from the bench, one more than Elliott Fenton of Nelson.
The ‘I scored most goals in a game’ crown went to Jason Hart at Longridge, Daisy Hill was on the end of the FIVE he scored in January. Five players struck four times in a game: Gareth Hill (Nelson, Michael Douglas (Lower Breck), Peter Donnelly (Lower Breck) and Richard Allen (Longridge), who also claimed the most hat-tricks with Five.
Penalty King was Anthony Hall at Daisy Hill who ‘sent the keeper the wrong way’ twelve times, five ahead of Louis Potts at Avro.
The leading League goalscorer was Richard Allen (Longridge) with 36 goals, 7 clear of teammate Jason Hart. In total 169 players got on the First Division North League goal scoring charts.
