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Hometown Refs

The Nomad

Bob Davidson (42)
So from your tables, South African teams had a +110 penalty count from 2017 to 2019 when playing at home against Australian or NZ opposition.

What happens when you add Jaguares and Sunwolves games to that?
Interesting only had a +10 penalty count during the same time while on the road .

It’s the one stat on the spreadsheet that is vastly different to NZ and Aus teams . Playing away the SA teams end up with a very even penalty count for and against . Playing at home they are up by plenty more than their opponents.

I don’t have a problem with certain teams regularly winning the penalty count as it could just be that they have better discipline, but to win the count by how much these numbers are suggesting is why people are making noise .
 

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
Also, some of the penalty counts (particularly the 1-20 count when the Lions hosted the Rebels) should never happen. You would expect that game should be an 80 point flogging but it was very close (36-33).
 

Rebels3

Jim Lenehan (48)
I understand that but if South Africa play away from home with a neutral ref and still win the penalty count, why is it so hard to believe that they can do the same at home without it being biased?

I would like to know were he got his stats from because he said that touring teams had 159 more penalties than SA the problem with that is that NZ and AU gave away 157 penalties compared to 101 for south africa so the difference is actually only +56 not +159 as he has implied.

And just so you are aware the pink results are home games with a neutral ref.

2017.webp


2018.webp


2019.webp
They were from the official super rugby website.

Looking at the stats it actually not the penalties that are been awarded, its the lack of penalties to the home team that is the outlier. Given the large sample size (n = 25+ for all metrics looked at) all metrics bar 1 fall within the same range of 9-10.5 pens awarded to either the home or away team. They are NZ teams refereed by a NZ ref, Aus refereed by an Aus ref, SA teams at home refereed by a neutral ref, SA teams away with a neutral ref. However within all this there is one outlier and that is SA teams refereed at home by a SA ref, where the count dramatically drops to only 7 pens a game with also the highest penalties awarded to the opposition (which I should point out is very marginal). It’s a differential of almost 3.5 pens, whereas every other area looked at, the pens averaged to less than 1 over their samples.

You could look at factors like altitude etc. however the penalty count win percentage of visiting teams in the republic under the same conditions with neutral refs wouldn’t be good evidence for this theory. Oppositiom teams in SA only win 16% of penalty counts under a SA ref, when it is a neutral they win 46%. Neutral refs are awarding roughly 9.5 pens a game compared to the 7 awarded under an SA ref.

What is causing this? Who knows? It could be several factors such as the environment (despite I said it wouldn’t be good evidence, however it could still be a factor), the opposition in the sample (it could be home ref allocation is only given to lesser teams therefore they might infringe more), television production influence on the ground, unconscious bias, who knows?

There is many factors at play here, most likely the most innocent and obvious reasons as to why. However it isn’t a good look and should be investigated just for the sake of the comps integrity.
 
S

Show-n-go

Guest
To me, all this is just another nail in the coffin to piss off South Africa

Corrupt country that keeps fucking up super rugby
 

KevinO

John Hipwell (52)
Does winning the penalty count correlate with winning the game?

No, but winning a penalty count by large number always does. Normally the bigger penalty counts mean massive wins to.

As quoted before the Lions v Rebels being 20-1 and the score being only a 3 point game is a bit crazy.

Example in a unheard of situation, Munster won a penalty count 0-15 against the Southern Kings and the score of the game was 43-0 to Munster. Kings had 3 yellow cards, Munster 56% Possession, 60% Territory, 7 trys etc. All the other stats were quite even.
 

barbarian

Phil Kearns (64)
Staff member
Rebels3 (and others), are there any stats on how neutral refs perform in South Africa?

That would be an illuminating statistic.
 

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
Rebels3 (and others), are there any stats on how neutral refs perform in South Africa?

That would be an illuminating statistic.


Assuming I am reading Reg's stats correctly it would be as follows:

Total South Africa home games against foreign team with any ref = 75 games, 580 penalties against home side, 746 against away side for an average of an extra 2.21 penalties a game against the away team.

Total South Africa home games against foreign team with a South African ref = 42 games, 295 penalties against home side, 449 against away side for an average of an extra 3.67 penalties a game against the away team.

That leaves:

Total South Africa home games against foreign team with a foreign ref = 33 games, 285 penalties against home side, 297 against away side for an average of an extra 0.36 penalties a game against the away team.
 

Strewthcobber

Mark Ella (57)
Yeah it's top work.

Just cause I thought it was interesting, and using zero_cool's spreadsheet from earlier in the thread.

Here's a graph showing penalty count v points differential.
1582669643367_SnipImage.JPG
 

barbarian

Phil Kearns (64)
Staff member
Total South Africa home games against foreign team with a foreign ref = 33 games, 285 penalties against home side, 297 against away side for an average of an extra 0.36 penalties a game against the away team.


That's pretty damning. Puts paid to the theory that visiting teams are more tired, struggle to adjust to altitude, etc.
 

Wilson

David Codey (61)
That's pretty damning. Puts paid to the theory that visiting teams are more tired, struggle to adjust to altitude, etc.

Was just making this point on the blog comments, makes it pretty clear the issue is the South African refs and not anything else
 

barbarian

Phil Kearns (64)
Staff member
The CEO of SANZAAR has responded, in rather bizarre fashion.

https://www.espn.com.au/rugby/story...r-responds-damning-research-hometown-referees

"It's very interesting that the whole neutrality (issue) comes up, when we've been on a meritocracy basis for the last 10 or 12 years, so I find that quite interesting at this point in time," Marinos told reporters during a bushfire fundraiser put on by the Lions in Sydney. "I think you've got to take a lens to where it's coming from.

"People are always producing statistics, but we will at the right time communicate our view on where we are from a competition perspective and the performances of our referees. I just don't understand where, all of sudden, after 10 years of meritocracy, suddenly now neutrality becomes an issue because a team, or teams, are suddenly are now feeling aggrieved by processes.


"I think what we need to do, is we need to validate those numbers, we need to put a proper picture in place, which is something we'll do and we'll be responding in due course on that."


Just when SANZAAR finalises that process remains unclear.

But Marinos called on the Australian rugby community to take a closer look at its own backyard in the meantime, alluding to some instances where the country's leading whistleblower Angus Gardner had come in for criticism in the past, most recently last year's World Cup."Minds are very very short in this [Australian] market where it wasn't so long ago that Angus Gardner got a bit of a public exposé in his internationals and his performance and there was a massive outcry about it; a very upset outcry, especially by Australia around 'how dare he be put up there and vilified, been made and used as a scapegoat, and his performances should be treated as confidential,'" Marinos said.

"So we've got a delicate balance here because what I do know and I've spent a lot of time talking to the refs, is that they don't go out there to deliberately negatively manipulate the outcome of a game and at the end of the day they're trying to manage what is a very [difficult] situation the best they can.

"Could we engage a bit more in terms on how we feel the referees are tracking? Absolutely; communication is certainly something that can be improved."
 

Jimmy_Crouch

Ken Catchpole (46)


So strange.

Why can't Lyndon Bray face the media each Sunday/Monday? He could answer pre-requested questions from the media about decisions from the weekends matches. Simple.

The reason I suggest pre-requested questions is so they could cut the film and educate all at the same time. Also so he can be clear on the decision.
 

RoffsChoice

Jim Lenehan (48)
Please, I've seen Aussie refs shit on the Brumbies more than I've ever seen them support them (though cheers to the Hoff for that game against the Force a few years ago, jeez you must have hated that Force team, you whistled us to victory there). And screw that "stones in glass houses" fallacy, you don't have to say Aussie refs are good to acknowledge how bad the stats are for Saffa refs.
 

Sully

Tim Horan (67)
Staff member
Please, I've seen Aussie refs shit on the Brumbies more than I've ever seen them support them (though cheers to the Hoff for that game against the Force a few years ago, jeez you must have hated that Force team, you whistled us to victory there). And screw that "stones in glass houses" fallacy, you don't have to say Aussie refs are good to acknowledge how bad the stats are for Saffa refs.
The stats just don't back that up. On average. There are always going to be bad calls though.
 
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