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Over the last month of football, the Western Bulldogs (AKA everyone’s second team), have boasted a 105 to 52 free-kick differential. This is an amazing statistic.
Focussing on individual player statistics, the unheralded Toby McClean has had 16 of these free kicks, and not one against him this season. That is 15 per cent of a team’s total free kicks paid to one player.
When you combine Tom Liberatore’s 11 frees (noting only two against), two players combine to tally a quarter of the total free kicks to the end of Round 7 for one team. Tom’s dad and chief antagoniser, Tony, would certainly be proud of those stats!
Cue fans’ outrage (particularly in the City of Churches).
“Bulldogs players duck their heads”, “the umpire is married to the Bulldog president’s daughter”, “the AFL has handed the Doggies a dream top four run, with their first seven games at Etihad”, and more footy fan vernacular not repeatable on a reputable website such as The Roar.
The controversial Round 7 match against the Adelaide Crows has also drawn out the fact that umpire Troy Pannell paid 17 frees to the Dogs, and just one to the Crows, in a 28-12 towelling from the men in canary yellow.
Umpires boss Hayden Kennedy clarified on Tuesday afternoon that there was not a lot wrong with the umpiring in general during the match, noting that “most of the hysteria has been as a result of the actual count”.
Of most interest, and to counter Kennedy’s assessment on counts, is that Pannell has umpired the last three Bulldogs matches, and the free-kick count has been a whopping 75-38 to the Bullies. A 2-1 ratio – with all games at Etihad.
Relatively new to the planning around umpiring appointments, I find it interesting that the same umpire has been allowed to officiate the same team for three weeks in a row, on their home ground.
I have a few questions around this repeat-appointment process.
Does this breed familiarity that has an impact on decision-making? Do umpires build an unintended rapport with players or playing styles that could alter instinctive reasoning? Do the above statistics support a general view that umpires get swept up in home-ground advantage?
Has Pannell (irrespective of whether his decisions were right or wrong) been completely compromised by the selection process, in being associated with three consecutive matches with very skewed free-kick counts for one team?
Umpires are under enough pressure as it is, making split-second decisions with no review opportunity in general play. The human element to this process is an inherent beauty to our Indigenous game.
Passionate fans ride this rollercoaster, where your good mood for the week could be affected by a decision a part-time accountant or lawyer has to make 28 minutes into the final term – with that umpire having already tracked 17 kilometres to make hundreds of split-second decisions during the course of a game.
Unfortunately, one has to bring in the notion of betting on Bulldogs games. If there is a pattern here, and Doggies players are seemingly getting the rub of the green, what does this mean for betting markets when particular umpires are appointed?
In the interim, the Bullies will make the finals this year and hopefully continue to excite with their play. And I do hope that they are being rewarded for being first to the ball.
However, it will make some interesting reading if Troy Pannell’s name is on the umpiring panel for a Western Bulldogs preliminary final match in late September.
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