Gold langou, solid gold!

I get a summer time and a winter time, I can only use my winter time in winter and my summer time in summer. Football and rugby/aussie rules rarely compete for the same time.

Australian U-19s qualified – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_AFC_U-19_Championship_qualification

Yes

Netherlands (With 3 second of thought) Portugal (3 more seconds) …

I have to admit I haven’t had any need to clean money, but I don’t think the betting we are talking about is taking place on Australian shores.

Not sure you would find any bookmakers at the Cranbourne greyhounds that would take on the bets needed to clean $40M.

If I needed to weekly clean that sort of money using gambling in the above mentioned way then I would try to make regular bets on the same thing. To me, a ‘surge’ in betting action only make sense when someone thinks they have more information than the general market. And in sports, the most obvious extra information would be some type of match fixing.

You missed the point. Throwing large amounts of money at an A-League game, where the pot would otherwise be small will arouse suspicion. You can clean that money by putting it a game where the same amount of money will appear much smaller and arouse far less suspicion. Nothing to do with snob value at all.

You want to clean $40 M and you decide to put it on an A-League match instead of EPL/NFL/NBA… To me that seems like head in the sand stuff.

It is possible that this was simply an attempt to clean money but isn’t more probably that some sort of match fixing was involved. For example, pay the referee to call the game in one teams favour so that the ‘real’ odds for W/D/L are 1.8/3.1/4.7. If you bet 20/12/8 the profit is over $5M. Not only do you clean your money but you make a handsome profit. How many part-time referees would refuse 500K for the odd game?

Are FFA paying enough to prevent such opportunities?

Let me give an example.

Johnny plays korfball for his club 10 times a year in a korfball league
Johnny plays korfball for his school 25 times a year in an organised competition.
Johnny plays korfball 120 times a year at lunch time.

My guess (and it is just that) is that he would be classified as a regular club participant.

Not sure it is a big deal since
1. I think my example is extreme
2. if you wanted to restrict the category to people who had played in a club setting at least 156 times a year you would restrict yourself to semi-professionals which I do not think is the focus of ERASS.

I think this is the original aim of ERASS. I believe they are interested in “regular” participation because of current health guidelines (not sure they ever had codewars in mind). Since many people do many different things it is easy to be regularly active but not regularly active in any particular sport.

In a similar vein, the fact that a sport has a relatively large number of unorganised participants may be ‘bad’ from a commercial perspective, but great from a public health perspective.
After all, most sport is unorganised – 87% of participants played an unorganised sport, Over half only played an unorganised sport. Adults have to work and don’t have parents to drive them to training during the week. A sport that is relatively easy to informally ‘organise’ and play will be viewed more favourably by government from a public health perspective (I did notice that ‘kick-to-kick’ was not a listed activity unfortunately).

If you have a look at the earlier reports, say 2001, they break out the ‘double dipping in organised and unorganised (not for specific sports unfortunately), the percentage who participated in both organised and unorganised is approximately 1/3.

Let me understand your question. What does regular organised physical activity mean (e.g. figure 26). It could be someone who has participated regularly and particpated in an organised way. It could means participated regularly in an organised way.

If you look at the survey, Q3 is
Was any of this (activity) organised by a club, association or other type of organisation?
and allows the the response of
All,Some, No, Don’t know.

My guess is that it is the first way.

Not sure if this is what you mean, after all the individual ERASS numbers don’t double (or triple) count – it is only when people start adding them together that that happens.

Oh, I forgot to mention that for most of the sports above the growth easily outstrips the increase in population of approx 13% (I make no comment on the statistical significance of any of these claims).

Just to clarify:

274,400 versus 239,700 is for NSW male total participation in specific activities (organised and non-organised)

“soccer is declining among under 34 year olds” – what sport(s) (indoor and outdoor?), what years are we comparing? (can’t see this one)

“The ABS shows soccer participation is declining among under 15’s as well.” – what report (I’m guessing Children’s Participation In Cultural And Leisure Activities) What years are we comparing? 2003-2009 I guess.

Not saying your claims are as creative as you accuse others of, I just want some context.

Obviously, you have a different definition of regularly to ERASS. I believe the origins of ERASS surveys is as a source of statistics for public health officials to determine patterns of activity levels of Australians. I think most on this website have a different perspective.

I would consider some one who plays in an organised league and trains during the week for at least half the year as a regular participant in their sport. So, some with more than 53 times a year (compared to the 156 that ERASS uses). On that basis here is the change from 2001-2009

2001 2009
154.5 234.5 Australian Rules football
25.1 18.2 Cricket (indoor)
89.5 104.1 Cricket (outdoor)
36 45.4 Football (indoor)
173.7 339.6 Football (outdoor)
141.9 215.2 Netball
78.8 100.1 Rugby league
37.1 54.5 Rugby union
47.7 37.9 Touch football

Again, you have to congratulate most of the sporting organisations for getting people more active (well, let’s assume it has something to do with them).

In the statistics, someone who plays both indoor and outdoor netball is counted as one participant in netball.
Someone who plays both indoor and outdoor football is counted as one participant in indoor football and as one participant in outdoor football.

To beaver fever,

If we want to talk about children, we could always refer to the following ABS report released in April: http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/691D5CEBE88905BCCA25765C0019E8D2/$File/49010_Apr%202009.pdf

That is just another thing to love about the report, they break down the data in all sorts of ways.

For example, as Michael C points out regular activity is at an average of at least 3 times a week for the whole year, so at least 150 organised sessions (of unspecified duration).

For completeness:
Organised physical activity – Physical activity for exercise, recreation or sport that was organised in full or in part by a fitness, leisure or indoor sports centre that required payment for participation; a sport or recreation club or association that required payment of membership, fees or registration; a workplace; a school; or any other type of organisation

Regular participants
Persons who participated in at least one physical activity for exercise, recreation or sport at least three times per week on average. Statistics that identify the number of times persons participated ‘per week’ are calculated by dividing the number of times individuals participated in physical activity for exercise, recreation or sport during the 12 months prior to interview by 52 (that is, number of weeks in a year). This provides an average of the number of times persons participated ‘per week’.

I once played a team sport for club and we did train twice a week and once on the weekend (which I think would be pretty standard), but since my sport was only played for half the year I would not come under the regular activity banner, my guess would be around the 75 times per year in an organised club setting.

So if this is what you want to measure, table 16 is probably the best set of numbers.

So I know the response is a bit tongue-in-cheek but I recall reading somewhere that the number of publicly available tennis courts in Australia has dropped dramatically, but I think they have been replaced by housing, not sports fields. As for golf courses, they are for selling houses aren’t they?

An interesting suggestion regarding fields, I suspect that the maintenance of grass sports fields is quite a drain on local councils. It would be interesting to compare the life cycle cost of natural over synthetic fields – may give sports like netball/football/hockey a cost advantage over aussie rules and rugby. Of course, if it becomes an issue I am sure these sports will make the appropriate investments.

This is the perfect topic for a non-aligned tab.

The more I think about, the more section 10.7 makes zero sense to me. If you can give me a concrete example of how those standard errors are derived I would love to see it.

there are 500 people in statstown
100 people play just korfball
100 people play just sofcrosse
100 people play both korfball and sofcrosse
200 people are lazy good for nothing ‘Norm’s (no offence to any Norms out there)

200 people play korfball
200 people play sofcrosse
300 people play a sport

What am I missing?

The ERASS survey is solid statistcal gold for the ROAR. An professional stratified random sample of people surveyed about their sporting activity, with no (obvious) agenda to push.

I think all the codes should be congratulated on making their sport more accessible. After all, I would imagine most people on here agree that a more active Australia is a good thing. Here is a short summary of the major sports field using codes.

Sport 2001 2009
Australian Rules 353.3 486.9
Rugby League 165.5 258.2
Outdoor Cricket 410.8 545.7
Outdoor Football 551.3 879.8
Touch Football 404.0 384.6

I focus on these sports because I think it highlights what will be a real tension in the future. The access to sports ovals. There are only so many places to play all these sports and ensuring access should be a major focus of the respective organising bodies. Aussie rules seems to be the most forward thinking in this area.

But in general the report can dispel or reinforce some conventional wisdom about sports participation in Australia.
1. Aussie Rules growth numbers is mainly through auskick
2. Football growth has been generated mostly by an increase in female participation.
3. Football numbers are understated because they don’t include non-organised participation.
4. Football numbers are overstated because they include non-organised participation.
5. If you include indoor/touch then you will find that X has more participants than Y

One note of caution – a lot of these numbers have large statistical errors (see section 10.7, though I have my own private doubts about the particulars).

There is overlap between organised and unorganised, i.e. the same person can participate in both in the same year. So the total participation is less than the sum of the two. There is also overlap between indoor and outdoor football so the total is less than the sum of the two. There is also overlap between Australian rules football and outdoor football (gasp, oh the horror) so the total is less than the sum of the two.

So, unless you define participants in a strange way then Michael C’s point is valid.

How about a (somewhat) novel approach. Give the team that is awarded the penalty a choice. They can accept 1/2 a point (goal) immediately or they can take a penalty and try for a full point (goal).

Disagree, I think the rule is very clear, and it must be deliberate otherwise it is not an offence.

It has everything to do with deliberate. From the same Law 12 “denying the opposing team a goal or an obvious goalscoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball”

Was it deliberate? Is the referee a mind reader?

Love the article and some interesting ideas. I believe what we saw yesterday was the symptom of a bigger problem. From the FIFA laws of the game (http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/generic/81/42/36/lawsofthegame%5f2010%5f11%5fe.pdf) A direct free kick is also awarded to the opposing team if a player … handles the ball deliberately (except for the goalkeeper within his own penalty area.

This law necessitates that the referee can read the player’s mind. The Kewell example is a classic case. Kewell (in the instantaneous moment) has two choices, he can try to move his body out of the way and let Ghana score directly, or he can try to chest the ball and save a goal. If you try to chest the ball away, the natural arm movement is exactly what you saw. Of course he could not move across far enough in time and instead the ball hit the arm).
Nothing in Kewell’s action is inconsistent with an attempt to chest the ball, but nothing is inconsistent with an attempt to use the upper arm deliberately to stop the goal. I agree completely with your assessment, the referee had two choices, neither of which was satisfactory.

There is a rumour that the International Football Association Board is considering an amendment to the rules that reflect your suggestions – eliminating the triple-punishment for a single crime.

It is the way of modern sport. I am sure that the AFL would have considered the best time to release the news. Look at how they turned it into a 2 day story.
Day 1 – release the rumour
Day 2 – hold the press conference to make it official.

All sports are doing it. Look at the announcement of the final World Cup squad – they decided on it straight after the Denmark game and could have announced it to the media at (almost) the same time. But that would be 2 soccer stories in one day. – They prefer to let the papers run the Aus-Den result on day 1 and then announce the squad tonight so it can run on day 2.

It is not targeting other codes directly, just trying to maximize column inches/air time.