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What happens when you bring together data geeks and sports enthusiasts? In this fascinating episode, Matt and Nick are joined by John Carney to explore the hidden world of sports analytics and the surprising role of randomness in athletic competition. John dives deep into the intersection of probability, statistics, and sports performance, revealing how data is transforming everything from penalty shootouts to player recruitment. The conversation ranges from the theatrical nature of sports as entertainment to the mathematical frameworks that help us understand (and predict) athletic outcomes.

You can find out more about Field of Play here: https://www.fieldofplay.co.uk/

The Pydata London Conference here: https://pydata.org/london2025

And more about the PyData Manchester here: https://www.meetup.com/pydata-manchester/

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Transcript auto-generated by Descript:

[00:00:00 ] Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 338 of the WB 40 Podcast This week with me, Matt Ballantine, Nick Drage, and John Carney.

[00:00:56 ] Well, welcome back to the reasonably, reasonably regularly on a fortnight basis. Podcast that is WB 40 now in, into our 10th year of putting this stuff together. Joining me hosting this week is my co-author, not only my co-host, but my co-author, Nick. I think this is the first time we’ve done the show together, where we have been the hosts.

[00:01:18 ] You’ve, I think, interviewed me in the past, but this is the first hosting we’ve done together. That is a good point. Yes. Yes, it is. How very exciting. How have you been over the last week or so?

[00:01:28 ] Nick: Alright. He says hastily, looking at what he’s done the last week. Thank, thank, thank God for calendars. I’ve been, and unfortunately the audience won’t see your response.

[00:01:41 ] I’ve been teaching people about wardly mapping. I’ve been looking at writing. Interactive. Well, I’ve been looking at course at writing interactive cities in a language called Inc. Which is something I’ve played with before, and that looks really interesting, just a way to build small interactive demonstrations or games.

[00:02:04 ] And then I was at a session at the weekend looking about building micro games, which are basically short, very short, very small war games , that take quite a while to design. But you can learn and play in like under half an hour, ideally like 20 minutes. If you wanna get a single point about an event rather than you play sort of the war for North Africa or something and understand it after months of replays, it’s like 20 minutes.

[00:02:30 ] You get the rough idea of how something works. So, looking into, so did that really good session. I need to generate some, I need to write some now.

[00:02:38 ] Matt: That sounds fun. How about

[00:02:39 ] Nick: you? What about you in your last week?

[00:02:40 ] Matt: Well, well, kind of related to that, I have started at last to read a book that I bought about a year ago which is, I can’t remember what the Intitle was, but it, it was originally the Oxford Book of Card games, and it’s not a book about sorry, the Oxford Book of Playing Cards.

[00:02:55 ] I think it’s. It’s not about a book about rules of playing cards, it’s the history of playing cards and playing card games. And the reason I mention that is because one of the things that it says quite early on is one of the reasons why some people don’t like card games played with a 50 standard, 52 card deck is because the de cards themselves gives you no indication whatsoever of how the game is.

[00:03:18 ] And so you have to learn the rules and the rules are completely independent. Whereas if you’re playing, I dunno, Scrabble or Ludo or whatever you, with the board and stuff, there’s, there’s information about what you’ve got to do and how it works right in front of you all the time. I also found out, which I didn’t realize, is that earlier versions of the game of chess were played for gambling and they involved dice and things like that as well, which is interesting ’cause we often, and I know we’ve been writing some stuff about how chess is very different to card games.

[00:03:46 ] But actually they, they came from a similar route originally, so, so that’s the sort of stuff that I’ve been looking at in terms of reading. I have started my civic duty this week. I can say no more about it than that and we’ll see where that goes. And other than that, I’ve, I mean, yeah, mostly it’s been getting ready to have a break from work for a short period and then getting ready to go back to work in about a week and a half and.

[00:04:12 ] Really getting into a new client. It’s been a very strange liminal few weeks where I’ve been sort of closing things down or putting things on pause and getting ready to start again. So, yeah. No, got it. That’s a bit odd. Anyway, joining us on the show this week John what have you been up to over the last week or so?

[00:04:32 ] john: Hey it’s been a busy week, the past week. I ended up gonna gi at my best friend’s wedding, so I exchanged the grim and dark of Manchester, the bright sunny of gi which is lovely. It’s wonderful. See, my best friend get married, had a lovely wife, and.

[00:05:04 ] On the flight home, I, I expect so I’m suffering at the moment, but been a lovely time. Was it warm? It was very warm. I’ve never been before, but very warm, very, very sunny. Not cloud in the sky. Very breezy at the same time. Very pleasant. I’ve never experienced that combination of 29 degrees Celsius and a nice core breeze at the same time.

[00:05:24 ] Matt: Oh, that sounds, yeah, my wife was in Seville a couple of weeks ago, and so similar. I mean, that’s not that far away. No, no. Right. From

[00:05:31 ] john: all aia, I believe.

[00:05:32 ] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So and, and is it the monkeys, apes something in Gibraltar? Yes.

[00:05:38 ] john: Monkeys on the, on the on the Rock. Can’t say I.

[00:05:42 ] Matt: Okay. That’s, that’s probably for the best.

[00:05:44 ] So we are are going to be talking this week about. At least two of about the six and a half dozen conferences that you apparently do in your spare time. One of which is the thing that originally brought me to your door, which is a thing called Field of Play. So I think probably we should crack on.

[00:06:02 ] john: Yeah, I do.

[00:06:59 ] Matt: I am a big believer in. How serendipitous events happen and how you and I, John got put in contact is one of those. I was at a conference about three months ago and I bumped into somebody who I’ve known for many years but hadn’t seen in donkeys and certainly hadn’t chatted to for a long while, and Andy and I were chatting away and he told me about a new venture that he had which involved sports data.

[00:07:26 ] He was being a bit cryptic about it ’cause it’s one of those stealth mode things, which I know that people mostly do because they haven’t quite worked out what the idea is yet. But and he he said about whether I knew anybody who knew anything about Sports Station, I had a think about it. I thought, well there’s somebody I know who used to work for England Wales Cricket Board, so I can put you in touch with him.

[00:07:44 ] And there’s somebody I know who works at the football association I used to work with at Microsoft, so I can put you in touch with him and I’ll have a word around and see if anybody else knows anybody. And so I had a word around, and you and I are connected through both being an equal experts network.

[00:07:59 ] We will not talk about equal experts tonight other than just to get that disclaimer outta the way. And somebody said, oh, you speak to John because he’s organized earlier this year, an entire conference about sports data. We exchanged a few messages and out the back of that, it sounded like it would be quite an interesting thing to talk about.

[00:08:15 ] So there, that is why we are here now today through that random chain of events. So field of Play happened March last year. You’ve got another one coming up. In 2026, which is so far in the future, it’s just impossible to believe numbers wise. And I realize it’s only like six months away. And I hope you’ve got the organization well in, in trail by now.

[00:08:36 ] But tell us about it. It’s less than that now. It’s. Yeah, I, I was telling somebody else today that procrastination is the, the evidence of original thinkers. So keep that in mind. But tell us about it. What, what, what is field of play? What drove you to, to create a conference about this stuff?

[00:08:55 ] john: That is a good question and a compelling one compelling one. Somewhere been a long story and a spiteful story. And I say that the most, the smallest of so let’s start with pie data because I promise it’s relevant. So I’ve been working in data for 10 or so, actually, no, sorry, 10 or 15 years.

[00:09:22 ] It’s been been while. And hence this is kind of how we’re connected through through the network. As part of this, after my first ever job which is a lovely job I got not knowing how to, I started a local chat.