A new study has indicated that hurling teams are more likely to be awarded frees if they're behind on the scoreboard. The finding is contained in the study "Compensating Tendencies in Free Shot Awards: The Case of Hurling" authored by John Considine (UCC), John Eakins (UCC), Peter Horgan (Croke Park) and Conor Weir (Croke Park). Considine, from the UCC Department of Economics (and a former All-Ireland medallist) joined RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime to discuss the research. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full above).
Did Considine have his suspicions before embarking on the research? "Well, I did in the sense that my mother used to say that referees would make a draw of it so that the GAA could get extra money. Now I didn't believe that. But around the time of the 2013 All Ireland final, when the game went to replay after Clare got a little bit extra added time and then subsequently went on to beat Cork, there was a book that came out called Scorecasting. They showed that baseball umpires, over millions of pitches we're talking - actually gave the benefit of the doubt to the pitcher or the batter who was behind in the count."
That sort of literature has grown, says Considine. "We just said we check it out for the GAA and we found that frees are awarded in this fashion. Now I must state up front: we're making no judgment on whether it was a correct free or not, they could all be correct. We only see the outcome, we see the free that was given and what we're seeing is that statistically, without a shadow of a doubt, the team that is behind on the scoreboard is more likely to get the next free."
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The statistics are: 39% of frees were awarded to teams who were ahead and 49% of frees were awarded to teams who were behind. The finding is statistically significant. The difference is big "in the context of a lot of games are decided by small margins. So it's important that we know. We might even look further into why it's happening," he says. "But it's a sizeable difference in the sense that it is 10%."
Is there a "home advantage" in refereeing decisions?
When it comes to referees, "there is no home advantage in refereeing decisions," says Considine. "Now there is evidence to show that home teams play better: players do perform better in their home town setting, they're more likely to win the game. But we were finding in in this, there is no difference between a game played, say, between Cork and Limerick in Cork or Limerick. There's no difference in terms of the frees and the way they're awarded."
"It's very interesting, a lot of people are convinced that there's cynical fouling in football and all of this stuff, but we we haven't looked at that. We've only looked at hurling, three seasons, every game over those three seasons. There's no doubt that if you were parachuted into a game and you had no idea what was going on, you look up at the scoreboard, statistically the more likely team to get the next free is the team that's behind," he says. "That could be the players reacting to, you know, "we're in front, we'll foul more". All we're saying is that it happens."
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What about explaining why it's happening? "I'm an economist - it's in a sport economics conference that this came out - as an economist you're obviously saying, "They're doing that for the GAA! It makes sense, they're going to make more money". But if you talk to the sport scientists they say it's the players. So we don't we don't really know."
"Having watched these games; the referees do a phenomenal job. If there's any policy recommendation out of it, I'd suggest that anybody who gets sent off on the sideline for giving out to a referee, should be made do a referee course and made do some games where they have to referee and walk a mile in the referee's shoes. Because looking at their coverage - they get things wrong, they get plenty wrong, but they do a phenomenal job."
