Dave Warner's Blog, page 12
August 26, 2018
NOTHING CHANGES – UMPIRES STILL BIASED TO HOME SIDES AND VICTORIAN SIDES MOST
Every year I dutifully do my analysis of the relative bias of home-town umpiring and it seems every year it throws up pretty much the same result – certainly for the last six years.
I don’t specifically look at how individual clubs do with umpires, I don’t have the resources but for many years the trend has been that the most favoured club, no surprise, is the West Coast Eagles. However, football pundits, especially those in Victoria, have failed to look at the deeper, more worrying trend (for those of us who follow Non-Victorian clubs anyway) and that is that non- Victorian Clubs, even with the Eagles, get the worst deal overall.
Most will recall early in the season when Victorians were up in arms over the free kick count against St Kilda versus The Eagles (25-12). But the Saints suffered exactly the same free-kick count against Essendon and nobody raised a peep. Nor did those same critics seem to care that the Swans were 9-20 against North, or 16-29 against the Western Bulldogs. For Swans supporters who lost the chance of a flag in 2016 via a horribly biased umpiring effort, it is par for the course. Check out the sample above – not one was paid a free-kick and I could have added another dozen.
Anyway, simply expressed here are the major findings for home town bias in umpiring 2018.
UMPIRES SIGNIFICANTLY FAVOUR HOME TEAMSTHE BIAS AS USUAL FROM LEAST TO MOST GOES LIKE THIS; least biased to Home Teams is when Home Victorian Team plays Away Victorian Team, next least biased when Home Non- Victorian Team plays Away Victorian Teams (Even with the Eagles!) second most biased is when Home Non-Vic Teams play Away Non-Vic Teams and yes, most biased when Home Victorian Teams play Away Non-Victorian Teams.With the West Coast Eagles games removed, Victorian Away teams suffer no disadvantage at all.The bias is common on both measures that I use – Overall percentage of free kicks paid, and Games Of Large Differential (GOLD) in free kicks.THE MEASURES
I split games into the four categories mentioned above plus two others – Home Derbies in SA and WA, and games played in a neutral town where there can be no reasonable basis for calling one team a “home team.”
The two stats used are then simply
ONE – a division on Home or Away basis of aggregate free kicks in each category to determine the percentage paid over the season to the various home and away categories
AND TWO – a division on Home or Away basis of GOLD games: a game qualifies as a GOLD game if one team receives 56% or more of frees and the other 44% or less.
FINDINGS
SEASON FREE KICKS OVERALL PERCENTAGE comes out like this:
HOME VIC V AWAY VIC total frees HOME 51.5 % AWAY 48.5%
HOME NON-VIC V AWAY VIC HOME 51.7 AWAY 48.3
HOME NON-VIC V AWAY NON-VIC HOME 52.3 AWAY 47.7
HOME VIC V AWAY NON-VIC HOME 52.6 AWAY 47.4
GAMES OF LARGE DIFFERENTIAL
HOME VIC V AWAY VIC % of GOLD Games Favouring HOME 56.2 % AWAY 43.8%
HOME NON-VIC V AWAY VIC HOME 61.5 AWAY 38.5
HOME NON-VIC V AWAY NON-VIC HOME 75 AWAY 25
HOME VIC V AWAY NON-VIC HOME 84.2 AWAY 15.8
Look at the huge discrepancy in the last figure. There were 19 games played between Home Victorian and Away Non-Victorian teams in which one team got 56% or more of the Frees – 16 times of those 19 it was the Victorian team that was favoured.
Please, tell me with a straight face that is not terrible bias.
Now to be fair, the Vic Teams playing Away didn’t get a fair crack either: that was 16-10 in favour of the Home Non-Vic Teams. Nowhere near as bad for the visitors but still not pretty. HOWEVER, if you remove West Coast Games this drops to 11-10.
This echoes recent years. When Vic clubs travel away with the exception of West Coast (and to a lesser extent Crows) games, they do no worse than if playing away in Melbourne.
The shocking pro-Victorian bias is very similar to 2016 when the grand final was marred by blatantly one-sided umpiring and does not augur well for those Non-Vic Clubs who might play a final in Victoria.
THE REASON FOR THE BIAS
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that umpires, like all of us, want to be liked and therefore tend to not penalise home teams, especially in blow-out free kick games. It would seem that umpires give the more intimidating home crowds Eagles/Crows a better go than the more placid Sydney and Queensland supported teams but why they should favour Vic home teams more who knows? Maybe because media and their own HQ is housed there they are more susceptible.
THE FIX
This bias has been around over the 15 years I’ve been doing stats and there has been no fix, not even an acknowledgment of a fundamental problem. Getting rid of Haydn Kennedy might help but I doubt it.
Irish and American players have shown they can adapt to our game so why not umpires.
If we want a truly unbiased adjudication, I think we should train neutral overseas umpires and house them off-shore, flying them in only for the game.
The locals have had their chance and repeatedly failed. Time to fix the mess.
July 4, 2018
eXXXpresso an E-book.
Of my novels eXXXpresso (2000) is a real favourite. Now it is available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle and other formats. Inspired by the likes of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, I really wanted to write a crime novel with humour. eXXXpresso started life as a film and I would love to see it on the big screen but in the meantime check it out. Don’t take my word – here’s what the critics say .
“If you’re looking for a book which will make you grip the pages tightly and stay up all night to get to the fusillade of surprises on the very last page – this is it. “ Faye Brinsmead Adelaide Advertiser.
“addictive, dry-humoured, with a manic-edge” Murray Waldren The Weekend Australian.”
“At last a touch of Carl Hiaasen’s crazy brilliance in Australia” Debra Adelaide Sydney Morning Herald.
June 5, 2018
DESPITE THE EAGLES VIC CLUBS STILL DO BETTER FROM BIASED UMPIRING
As we approach the half-way point of the AFL season, I like to do my annual on Home Town Umpiring Bias stats and see if the usual trends continue – and YES they do: UMPIRES RELENTLESSLY FAVOUR THE HOME TEAM as they did last year and every year in the last fifteen or so since I’ve been examining such stats.
THE PARAMETERS USED
Firstly, let me explain the parameters I use. I keep it simple.
I look at TWO MEASURES, first the percentage of total frees paid to Home Teams across 4 categories.
These categories are
1 VIC HOME TEAM v VIC AWAY TEAM
2 NON-VIC HOME TEAM v VIC AWAY TEAM,
3 NON-VIC HOME TEAM v NON-VIC AWAY TEAM and
4 VIC HOME TEAM v NON-VIC AWAY TEAM.
The second parameter I look at, and the MOST IMPORTANT is GAMES OF LARGE DIFFERENTIALS (GOLD) in relation to free kicks across the same four categories.
Such games are I define as games where one team gets 56% or MORE of the total free kicks (and therefore the other side gets 44% or less).
Now over the last 5 or 6 years the consistent trend has been that while ALL AWAY TEAMS suffer, the teams that generally suffer the most are NON-VICTORIAN AWAY TEAMS playing HOME VICTORIAN TEAMS.
Interestingly, when I first began looking at the stats back in the early 2000s the teams that did worst were NON-VICTORIAN AWAY TEAMS playing NON-VICTORIAN HOME TEAMS. This year that trend has returned.
Generally, the most even category is VICTORIAN HOME TEAMS v VICTORIAN AWAY TEAMS. Also generally, but not universally, VICTORIAN AWAY TEAMS against NON VICTORIAN HOME TEAMS, while coming off second best, still get a BETTER DEAL than the NON-VIC TEAMS when they are playing away.
WEST COAST EAGLES EFFECT
A further consistent finding is that THE WEST COAST EAGLES are by far the most favoured team in the comp (not just home but home and away combined) .
WHEN THE WEST COAST FIGURES ARE STRIPPED OUT OF THE DATA IT IS SHOWN THAT THE NON-VICTORIAN AWAY TEAMS do very much worse from umpires than their Victorian counterparts when playing away. (please see attached spreadsheets and note stats with Eagles included and then removed)
HISTORICAL TRENDS
In all the categories over all the years since 2007, there are only two occasions where Away Teams have topped Home Teams.
UMPIRES FAVOUR HOME CROWD TEAMS END OF STORY! To debate this is pointless and obstinate.
Disturbingly for Non-Vic Teams, they come off worse than their Victorian counterparts ESPECIALLY WHEN THE EAGLES AFFECT STRIPPED AWAY.
This bias against Non-Vic teams reached its apogee in 2016. Note in the attached tables that in 2016 in GOLD the bias in favour of Home Vic Teams was 19 to 2!!!! With the Eagles contributing one of these. NON VICTORIAN TEAMS PLAYIG IN VIC OR TASSIE HAD A 1 IN 20 CHANCE OF HAVING SUBSTANTIALLY MORE FREES THAN THEIR OPPONENTS.
This is a disgrace but the bigger disgrace was the tainted Grand Final of 2016 where the umpiring bias was clearly evident and so detrimental to Sydney that one can make no valid judgement on whether the better team won on the day.
2018 CURRENT STATUS
Regrettably the bias is not getting any better. It has to end. The AFL cannot consider itself a premium sport when this fundamental issue remains unsolved. The only time the Melbourne media gets involved is when the Eagles have a landslide game in the west but Non-Vic Teams cop the same treatment regularly when playing away.
So here are this year’s figures.
Note, neutral games – where teams play in venues like Alice Springs are not included. The “derbies” “showdowns” etc of Sydney, Perth, Adelaide are not included in the stats for Home Non Vic v Away Non Vic as both teams are from the same city. The first half of this table shows the percentage of frees paid to Home or Away teams as a percent of TOTAL frees in that category. The lower half of the table shows the split in GOLD games.
HOME VICAWAY VIC HOME NON-VICAWAY VIC HOME NON-VIC (not including derbies)AWAY NON-VIC HOME VICAWAY NON VIC%51.7349.27 51.5349.47 53.3446.66 52.4747.53GOLD in favour of –116 84 62 93
INTERPRETING THE TABLE
Looking at this table we see that in every category the HOME TEAM leads the AWAY TEAM.
In GOLD Games the best AWAY TEAMS can hope for is a 1-2 ratio. (in both instances Vic Teams doing the best)
We can also see that by percentage the teams worst off are Non-Vic Teams playing away to other Non-Vic Teams but not far behind comes Non Vic Teams against Vic Home teams.
In GOLD when the WC EAGLES are stripped out of this category it is only 5-4 in favour of Non-Vic Home Teams when hosting Vic Teams. Apart from playing the Eagles, visiting Vic teams might as well be playing away at the MCG.
***By the way, so far in the three derbies, showdowns etc played the GOLD is 2- 0 in favour of the Home Teams.
The BROAD TREND IS THE SAME AS USUAL: THERE IS A HUGE HOME TEAM BIAS IN UMPIRING AND WHEN PLAYING AWAY, VICTORIAN TEAMS ARE RELATIVELY A LOT BETTER OFF THAN NON VIC TEAMS. This finding is particularly relevant in discussions on Grand Finals being played at the MCG between Victorian and Non-Victorian Teams.
TABLE 1 attached shows total frees paid over the season to each category
TABLE 2 shows the total season breakdown of GOLD games in each category
TABLE 3 shows the percentage of total frees and GOLD GAMES in the categories NON VIC HOME v VIC AWAY but with WCE Eagles home games stripped out. And VIC HOME V NON VIC AWAY with WCE away games stripped out.
