NRL home town bias is increasing in 2009

 

Roar Guru

By PuntPal, 21 Jul 2009 The Crowd is a Roar Guru

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 home team advantage, NRL, penalties, referees, Rugby League

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When people complain about dodgy video referee decisions in the NRL they often have a right to be angry – the inconsistency of the video referees is simply infuriating. But the real source of injustice in the NRL stems from the bias policing of the ruck and the inability of the referees to fairly assess when a player has been held down too long.

The basic approach taken by the referees is to give the home team a lot of leeway, whilst making sure the away team doesn’t get away with a thing.

The same approach applies to policing the offside rule and the grapple tackle rule. The home town bias is nothing new, but I believe it is clearly getting worse…and the statistics for 2009 support this theory (see below).

Let us focus on the policing of the ruck.

There is often over 500 tackles made in an average NRL game and in each of those tackles, the referee is asked to decide when defenders have breached the rules by holding the tackled player down too long.

When it comes to awarding penalties for holding down too long, the referee is asked to use their discretion and this requires the referee to distinguish between tackles based on split second differences.

So for example, tackler 234 may hold the ball carrier down for 2.34 seconds, whereas tackler 278 held the player down for 2.35 seconds…and somehow the referee will award a penalty against tackler 278, even though the difference is so slight that it is impossible to claim the referee has properly distinguished these tackles (remember these are the same referees that often miss blatant forward passes or offsides – so excuse me for not believing the referees possess 20/20 vision and have in-built stop watches connected to their brains).

The simple point is this – the referees want to avoid media controversy, and to do this they allow the home team to get away with blue murder in the ruck.

This means the away team stands little chance of getting a roll on and consequently, they will often lose the game. When the home team dominates and win, most people at the ground leave happy and the game goes by without too much being said in the media.

When a game is close however, the referees realise that one bad call in the dying minutes could lead to them being scrutinised by the media. So obviously the best result for the referee is for the home team to win convincingly and avoid the chance of being asked to make a crucial decision at the end of the match.

Well a quick analysis of the figures (below) shows that away teams are finding it increasingly difficult to win in 2009.

Now the reasons for this trend could be numerous and I note that the statistical sample is not massive – but I stand by the above statement about the policing of the ruck.

Further, I believe it is quickly leading to fans becoming disillusioned with the NRL and something that should be exposed.

From round 1 to round 13:
- 50 home teams won
- 39 away teams won.
- 2 draws.

So out of the 91 games played between round 1 and round 13, the away teams won just under 43% of the games played.

From round 14 to round 19:
- 23 home teams won
- 11 away teams won
- 0 draws

So out of the 34 games played between round 14 and round 19 (excluding Eels v Storm) the away teams have won just over 32% of the games played.

This is something for us fans to keep an eye for the remainder of the 2009 season. I will update this article after round 26 to see whether there is a continuing trend here.