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(Video) The Greatest Goals Ever Scored #6: Johnny Metgod Nottingham Forest V West Ham 1985

By admin | March 31, 2011

A brand new CaughtOffside series with a catchy title and nice graphic. Is this the sweetest struck free-kick ever? The ball appears to be travelling at the speed of light and even though it was right at Phil Parkes, the Hammers legend could do nothing about it.

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Science of Sport awards: Sports science story of the year

By admin | January 21, 2012

Sports science story of the year: Looking into the brain

Looking back on 2011, but through an academic lens, leaves the impossible task of trying to pick a research highlight. I guess in much the same way as your choice of a Sports Star of the Year would be influenced by your choice of sport (Messi, Djokovic, Cavendish or Wellington), the choice of most exciting or impactful sports science story of the year is heavily influenced by your particular focus within the sciences.

Similarly, within sports science, you may be heavily invested in physical activity and disease, molecular basis for injuries, applied physiology, or performance physiology.

My personal focus, at least during my PhD was fatigue, and specifically the role of the brain in the regulation of performance and pacing strategy. Therefore, my pick as the sports science story of 2011 is a series of studies out of Switzerland, which have provided the first evidence of how brain structures interact with one another during fatiguing exercise. To quote from the third of the three studies:

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically demonstrate that muscle fatigue leads to changes in interaction between structures of a brain’s neural network

Background – the brain was clearly involved, but the “how” was missing

As I was finishing my PhD, the problem I encountered is that we were able to observe how performance and specifically pacing strategy was affected by various interventions (heat, high or low oxygen, energy supply, deception or manipulation of distance information), but we didn’t have the tools to measure the neural processes that were producing these changes.

Briefly, it was pretty clear that exercise performance was regulated by the brain, and over time, the theory evolved that the brain was monitoring all the physiological systems and ensuring that performance was optimized in the face of potentially limiting (or even harmful) changes in homeostasis. For example, it had been shown pretty clearly that when we hit a body temperature of around 40 degrees celsius, we stopped – limiting fatigue due to hyperthermia. Therefore, as soon as exercise was self-paced, the brain would monitor the rate at which the temperature was rising, and then regulate exercise intensity in order to prevent us from hitting this “limit” before the known end of exercise.

The same was true for exercise at altitude, with low glycogen stores, and when you lied to athletes about how much exercise remained – there was an anticipatory component to fatigue, so that fatigue was not merely the failure of physiology, but the process by which that potential failure (in performance, in this case), might be regulated.

The problem is that our ability to measure the neural contributions was limited. We were able to measure muscle activation levels, albeit crudely during dynamic exercise, but it gave a pretty clear picture of how the degree of muscle recruitment was altered by the brain over the course of exercise and with different situations. However, much had to be inferred from how power output or running speed changed as a function of changes in various physiological systems.

Therefore, at the conclusion of my PhD back in 2006, we had a theory, sometimes called the “central governor” model, which I believe accurately explained what was observed during exercise, but was in need of a mechanistic component. The theory began to evolve into the realms of philosophy (sometimes deliberate, other times out of ignorance). And one of the problems was this lent itself to gross misunderstandings. A very respected scientist came to me in Denver this year and mocked the theory because it meant there must “be a little man dancing around in your head telling you how to exercise”.

Of course, that is not part of any theory I’ve ever seen, but in the absence of measurements of brain function during exercise, it is, I suppose, the inevitable criticism. This lack of mechanistic explanation is one of the primary reasons that I looked elsewhere for future research, because we had taken our observations to a point where we had a model, a theory for how fatigue and physiology were inter-related, how pacing and performance were regulated, but we could not move beyond the hypothetical.

And so when, only a few months ago, a series of three studies on fatigue and the brain were published, it was an exciting breakthrough, the first, I suspect, of many, which will push the field of fatigue and exercise into the next phase of understanding.

The three studies: Building the model of fatigue

Science Daily have a really concise summary of the three studies, including some quotes from the scientists involved. I won’t rehash the translation of the science here, but rather direct you to their summary.

For those interested in the papers discussed in that article, they are at the followings links:

Afferent pain information from the muscle contributes to inhibition of the motor cortex during fatiguing muscle contractions
The thalamus and insular cortex are involved in regulating exercise in response to afferent information from the muscle
Communication between brain areas during fatigue exercise

The studies are certainly a breakthrough, but by no means a complete picture. For example, the first of the three studies produces a similar finding to a body of work by Markus Ammann (not in 2011, but over the last 4 or 5 years), which have shown a similar role of afferent (feedback) information from the muscle to the brain. The motor output (think muscle activation) is clearly influenced by this information, which should be obvious as soon as one accept that fatigue, and therefore performance, are regulated in the same way that any system is (blood glucose, body temperature etc – there are sensors, there is feedback, there is an effector).

What is needed next is to move this technology on from isolated muscle contractions and onto dynamic exercise. The above studies all used pretty isolated exercise (handgrips or leg extensions), or they use EEG during cycling (in Study 3). When we can measure brain activity using fMRI in different regions of the brain during a 10km running time-trial, for example, then we will have some extremely powerful information.

That breakthrough may be coming – at my University, some colleagues have done some great work and are in fairly advanced stages of being able to measure brain activity using fMRI during cycling activity, and that should unlock more secrets – the video is below.

Next step – decoding the “lights” and making sense of data

Once this can be done, then it’s a matter of understanding what it all means. The field of neuroscience has long ago evolved from a “black box” approach to understanding brain function, towards an integrated model. The danger for sports science is that the same may happen. Indeed, it already exists – this mindset has been another source of criticism for the central governor, in that people seem to expect it to be a distinct anatomical structure. Even the approach to studying fatigue has probably been held back by too specific approach to what is clearly a multi-faceted, complex phenomenon.

The reality is that it’s far too complex for that, and only many years of research will build the picture of how the brain integrates such vast complexity to regulate performance in the obvious way that it does!

2011 may have provided the first steps, but they are the first of many!

Ross

Next time: Sports stars of the year

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Science of Sport awards: Teams of the year – Kenya & Barcelona

By admin | January 13, 2012

Team of the year – Kenyan athletics and Barcelona

Welcome to 2012! It’s an Olympic year, the undoubted highlight of the year for us, but there are Tours, Marathons, meets and matches to cover and we are looking forward to the analysis, debate and discussion. We hit our three millionth visitor on New Year’s Eve, and we’re hoping for another million this year! Dollars, that is…!

I’m still forging on with the recap of 2011 (better late than never), only three to go, and then we’ll start looking ahead to 2012. And today, it’s Team of the Year, which is a shared award between Kenya (a pseudo-team, since athletics/running aren’t exactly team sports) and Barcelona.

Kenya – total dominance

2011 was the year of the marathon, and it was completely owned by Kenya. Not just dominated, but owned. The year-end lists show that the Top 20 times in the marathon were run by Kenyans. That’s right – all 20 were from Kenya. That list includes a new world record, and the winning performances from every major city marathon in 2011, and the World Championships marathon. Not only were the majors won by Kenyans, but the course records at every major city marathon were broken too. Not in that list are the incredible Boston marathon performances, where Mutai and Mosop ran 2:03:02 and 2:03:06 respectively, since those times are not eligible for official lists (the result of that, in case you are wondering, is that Ryan Hall’s 2:04:58 also doesn’t feature on that list – it’s the fastest performance by a non-Kenyan in 2011, but not official).

The result of this Kenyan dominance was that the average of the Top 10 performances was a staggering 2:05:00. That’s almost 40 seconds faster than the world record only nine years ago, and more athletes broke 2:07 in 2011 than ever before (25 did it – 24 were Kenyan, only dos Santos of Brazil is in that company. 2:06 was broken by 11 men, incidentally). In November, I analyzed the top performances and discussed the “seismic shift” that has occurred, along with some of the reasons behind it – worth a read for more detail.

Perhaps the most remarkable statistic was this one – 70 Kenyans ran faster over the marathon than the fastest European athlete. That was Oleksandr Sitkovskyy, a Ukranian who ran 2:09:26. Ryan Hall’s officially recognized performance from Chicago (2:08:04) is the second-fastest of the year by a non-African (dos Santos being first).

Kenya’s dominance does not end with it’s men marathon runners. On the women’s side, marathon running is not nearly as dominant, but they still have four women in the top 10, including the second fastest performance of 2011 with Keitany’s London win. Kenyan women swept the medals in the Daegu World Championships in August (Kiplagat, Jeptoo and Cherop), and they won two of the Majors (London and Berlin). The battle between the Kenyans, particularly Keitany who really should have won New York but for her super fast early pace, and Liliya Shobulkhova, 2011′s world number 1 will be one of the highlights of 2012, whether it comes in London in April or in August.

On the track, Kenya had one of their most successful campaigns ever. At the Daegu World Championships, Kenya finished third on the medal table, winning 7 golds, 6 silvers and 4 bronzes. The golds were won across the spectrum – Men’s 800, men’s 1500m, men’s steeplechase, men’s marathon, women’s 5000m, women’s 10000m and women’s marathon.

Only one missing accolade

The only area where Kenya have yet to figure out a solution to the Ethiopian riddle is the long track events for men. In the 10,000m in particular, Ethiopian men have shut Kenya out of gold since 1993. In fact, with the exception of Charles Kamathi’s gold in 2001, Ethiopian men have won every 10,000m gold since 1993 (admittedly, of the twelve golds won by Ethiopia in this stretch, 11 were shared between two men – Geb and Bekele!)

Unless Kenya can discover a 26:40 man with 52 second final lap closing speed in the next 6 months, that streak looks set to continue in London, though Mo Farah may have something to say about whether it’s an Ethiopian streak or just a ‘non-Kenyan’ one!

Other than this, however, it’s difficult to see Kenyan dominance being broken. 20 out of 20 in the marathon. Their gold medallists looked peerless in Daegu. And in Vivian Cheruiyot, they have the world’s best female athlete, one of the stars of London 2012 if she maintains her 2011 form. Kenya will therefore be the best performing African nation in London.

For the rest of the world, competing at the very highest level must feel futile. Hall flies the flag, as does Keflezighi, for the USA. The promise of Galen Rupp stepping up to the marathon will be interesting, since he brings 26:40-credentials to the road. That of course is one of the big reasons for the shift in marathon running – the entry of very fast, 26:40 men into the marathon before they have lost that speed. Mo Farah is the other athlete who will be looked at to challenge Kenya over the marathon one day.

The genetic vs training debate

The scientifically fascinating debate is whether this dominance is genetic or environmental. That’s an unnecessarily polarized question. To repeat a mantra I used a lot in 2011 – when someone wants to polarize an explanation into one of two things, they are always wrong. The reality is that the kind of dominance that has been achieved by Kenya is too complex to the result of one or two factors. If it was one, or even two-dimensional, then the world would imitate it very easily. The fascinating thought experiment would be to apply the same environmental factors (training, diet, altitude, culture, socio-economic factors) to a few groups around the world, over three or four generations, and see how successful they are. Of course, this experiment isn’t going to happen, so we speculate.

There’s no question that the pioneers of distance running in Kenya, the men who won Kenya’s first global medals in the 1960s, were the catalyst for a generation of young athletes who could now simply imitate and aspire to follow in their footsteps. Physical activity is a part of life in Kenya (not always running to and from school, I might add), and so is the desire to become a great runner. The economic incentives are enormous, there are sufficient competition structures to identify the most talented athletes, and a culture of success that is demonstrated by the 2011 marathon results – “he did it, why not me?”

But none of these factors, as well-described as they are, disprove that some genetic factor is also in play. The same ingredients applied elsewhere (because let’s face it, there are many other regions around the world with similar isolated factors) may not produce the same results. In a nation of 270 million people, for example, is there not a single athlete who has trained as hard as 100 Kenyans, with the same desire to succeed? Of course there will be, but the ceiling that can be reached is genetically influenced.

I am something of a believer in the role of genes in performance, as you may recall from our talent vs training debate. The failure of science to discover that gene, I believe, is more a function of genetic complexity combined with our limited ability to understand it. As mentioned in the genetic debate, it takes 300,000 gene variants to explain only 50% of something like height. Only 45% of training response can be explained by vast gene arrays. How much more complex might performance be?

2011 produced some of the first scientific evidence that the response to training was strongly influenced by genes. That is, it was found that individuals who had a certain number of specific genetic variants (called SNPs) were “high-responders”, whereas those who lacked these specific gene variants saw almost no change in their VO2max or performance after months of training (the “low responders”). You can read more on this study here. What hasn’t been done yet is to show whether these SNPs are present more in certain populations than in others. That’s the study that would show whether the probability of discovering a high responder (and thus potential great runner) is greater in some groups than others. Of course, as molecular methods improve, and genome-wide association studies become more powerful, these potential links will become clearer.

The fact that Jamaica and the USA dominate sprints and that east Africa dominate distance running is one of the most intriguing areas of exercise physiology. And exercise economics, when you look at things like incentives, culture, economic factors. The addition of genes to this mix is what makes Kenyan running so fascinating.

Until those answers are provided, we have only questions and theories. There’s no doubt however, about who the team to beat is in international running. The only question, for the rest of the world, is “How”?

Barcelona – changing the way coaches approach sport

The second winner of the Team of the Year award is Barcelona’s all conquering football team. On the surface, that’s an easy award to give out, because Barcelona have been exceptional. In 2011, they won the Champions League, Spanish League title, World Club Championships, and a host of other trophies, bringing to 12 (out of a possible 15) the number of titles they’ve won under coach Pep Guardiola.

The fascinating thing for me, at least from a sports science/management perspective, is the manner in which they have achieved this success. Yes, they have some of the greatest players in the world – the Player of the Year award title for 2010 (awarded in 2011) was a straight shootout between three Barca players in Lionel Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta (Messi won it). But the Barcelona “way” is so distinctive that it has begun to inspire coaches and sports administrators from other sports to want to imitate it.

Much has been written about the Barcelona style of football, and their now legendary youth academy, La Masia (one such story can be read here), which produced Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol, Pique, Febregas, Busquets and Valdez of the current typical starting 11.

Barcelona’s movement off the ball, the positional awareness of the players, the work rate when not in possession, and the ability to manipulate space and defenders are the “buzzwords” that I’ve heard a great deal around the sport of rugby, for example! One rugby coach has expressed that it is his vision to be the “Barcelona of Sevens rugby”, such is the influence of Barcelona on other coaches.

And why not? Barcelona’s dominance has been complete and distinctive, technically speaking, to the point that their opposition have likened playing them to playing against Playstation figures. I’d be going beyond the limits of my own football knowledge to describe the technical characteristics of what the players learn at La Masia, and at the senior team, the specifics of what make them so remarkable.

The success of the club is again not the product of any single factor (in the same way that Kenyans aren’t great runners for one reason alone). So the Barcelona approach to youth development, their focus on skill and movement rather than size, strength and speed, and their desire to teach sportsmanship and creativity ahead of winning are only part of the mix. Not one of these factors should be viewed as a competitive advantage, however – they are all easily replicated, in theory anyway.

The youth academy concept is now so common in sports, particularly football and rugby, and many of the elements and principles are shared, at least on paper. The ethos of youth development is not unique, and nor is the attitude that “we invest in the person, not just the player”. This approach to youth-development is now accepted as best-practice, and every academy will have a code of conduct that dictates how young players are to be taught and managed. So again, simply following the “recipe” doesn’t guarantee the end-product.

The challenge for other coaches and sports administrators, even in sports like rugby, who want to imitate the Barcelona way, is to recognize how difficult it is to develop the culture that underscores the technical excellence and the on-field results.

Nevertheless, the Barcelona model will continue to be discussed, and attempts made to imitate it. It is the sincerest form of flattery. What we (the outsiders) see is the end result, which is sometimes breath-taking. The 5 goal demolition of Real Madrid in 2010, the 4-0 defeat of Santos in the Club World Championship final in December, and the defeat of Manchester United in the Champions League Final at Wembley are some of the highlights from Barcelona’s on-field “end product”. Whether the system can be reverse engineered, I have my doubts, but when a team is held up as the gold standard for how to play, then they’re worthy of “Team of the Year”.

Ross

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QPR Boss Mark Hughes Lines Up Tottenham Midfielder as First Loftus Road Signing

By admin | January 13, 2012

Newly installed Loftus Road manager readies move for White Hart Lane bench warmer.

Watch Newcastle United v QPR Live Streaming

Queens Park Rangers are set to launch a bid for Tottenham midfielder Steven Pienaar, Sky Sports understands.

The South African schemer has become disillusioned with the lack of first-team chances at White Hart Lane.

Pienaar moved to Tottenham 12 months ago from Everton, but has started less than 10 league games in that time.

Now the 29-yaer-old is ready to quit the club and a number of sides have already shown an interest in taking him.

Former club Everton and Sunderland were strongly linked, but Sky Sports understands Qpr are ready to emerge as favourites by making a firm offer.

SOURCE: Sky Sports

Steven Pienaar’s career has definitely stagnated since his move to White Hart Lane and a move to Loftus Road may well help to re-ignite the winger’s career. The former Everton man moved to North London a year ago on the cheap as his Toffees deal was set to expire but any hope of a regular spot in Harry Redknapp’s first team has long since been extinguished and clearly Spurs are managing very well without the South African playing a role in the starting eleven.

Mark Hughes has been handed a large transfer war-chest and a move for the 29 year old wouldn’t take up much of those funds and the experienced attacker could well add a new dimension in the final third that may help to steer the West London side away from the drop zone.

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Bawful After Dark: January 12, 2012

By admin | January 13, 2012

I knew they both went to the same college, but I guess they’re closer than I thought

Some good news for you today. Andrei Kirilenko is interested in coming back to the NBA next season. That’s great news — we’re a little short on our quota of ugly guys with awesome nicknames.

Worst of the Night in Pictures:

Everything you need to know about the Generals/Bulls game summed up in one picture

Jermaine O’Neal tries to do us all a favor. Also, LL Cool J approves.

Heh.

Nationally Televised Games:

Knicks at Grizzlies, TNT, 8:00pm: A Mike D’Antoni team has been playing something resembling defense lately? Did I wake up in an episode of the Twilight Zone again?

Magic at Warriors, TNT, 10:30pm: Kwame Brown is out for at least three months with a torn pectoral muscle. The Warriors are doomed!

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED

A few thoughts. First, of course he hurt himself fouling. Now, obviously, their only hope now is to sign Greg Ostertag to replace him. (My fingers are crossed so hard, you guys) And finally Trey Kerby made, in my opinion, the greatest possible joke about this situation: “Did you know — Kwame Brown tore his pectoral muscle patting himself on the back for how great his post defense is in practice.”

All The Other Games:

Bobcraps at Hawks, 7:30pm: Al Horford is out for at least three months with a torn pectoral muscle. Wait, didn’t I just type that? (looks up) Yes, Al Horford has a similar injury to Kwame. Let’s hope the similarities end there. Anyway, the Hawks just got even more Hawksy.

Pistons at Bucks, 8:00pm: Who’s ready for a shootout??? Neither of these teams! The final score has to be something like 78-75, right?

Cavaliers at Suns, 9:00pm: Cleveland’s seven-game road trip continues. A nice little stat: Antawn Jamison has lost eight consecutive games against the Suns. However, to be fair the first six of those were while he was with Washington, so those probably shouldn’t count.

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Rugby World Cup: The ref debate

By admin | October 29, 2011

It’s been a long time between posts – busy work periods, lack of inspiration, lack of news stories (well, that’s not entirely true!), but pick the excuse. Apologies for the long break. I’m back with a viewpoint on rugby – probably not the topic of interest for most of you reading this in the USA, but as our national sport in SA, felt compelled to put it out there! I’m planning a series on fatigue, probably as a series of short video posts in the coming week, so hopefully that breaks the silence on sports science! Join us soon! And for those who followed the Rugby World Cup, congratulations to New Zealand. Some thoughts on the refereeing below!

Rugby World Cup: New Zealand’s drought ends and rugby’s referee problem

So 24 years of waiting is over for New Zealand, who beat France 8-7 in a pulsating and perhaps unexpectedly competitive Rugby World Cup Final today. It may have been the lowest scoring final ever played, but it was suspenseful and adventurous, certainly more than the previous two finals. France produced a performance worthy of the showpiece match of the tournament, having come into it with two losses and the anticipation of a blowout victory to New Zealand. Rather, it was France who played the adventurous rugby, and only some ineffectiveness in attack and New Zealand’s resolute defending prevented them from winning their first title.

Instead, New Zealand won their second, but it was significant in that they have been, for the most part, the best team going into each of the six World Cup tournaments, sometimes by a large margin. Having failed to win the World Cup on five occasions despite being the favorites had earned New Zealand the tag of “chokers”, a team that peaked between World Cups but failed to deliver when it mattered. Two of those famous defeats came at the hands of France (in 1999 and 2007) and so when this French team stood firm and began to control the match following a second half try that brought the score back to 8-7, a blanket of anxiety settled over Eden Park in Auckland.

Choking vs panic

There were times when New Zealand appeared close to panic in this final – they were flustered, made unforced errors, chose poor tactical options and generally seemed to be hanging on and defending a one-point lead with desire rather than application. At this point, it seemed to me that had New Zealand NOT won this World Cup, it would have been because of panic, rather than choking (an explanation that is just too convenient to use, and unfairly earned, not only by NZ rugby by also by SA cricket). Their composure deserted them, though the injury to their flyhalf, which meant that they played most of the final with a fourth choice pivot, certainly influenced their tactical approach. As did their lead, and they seemed more concerned with defending the one-point advantage than playing proactively, which set the final 30 minutes up as France with the ball, New Zealand without it.

For an explanation of how choking differs from panic, and why a team that loses a match is not necessarily choking, read this piece by Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve never really been fond of simply throwing out the excuse of “chokers” every time the more favored team loses – sometimes you are just outplayed or out-thought by a team who are better than you on the day. The margins in international sport are so small that this can happen fairly easily, and it’s too simple to say “New Zealand choked”, when in fact, France may have simply been unbeatable on a given day, as was the case in 1999. For a comparable case in tennis, Federer’s loss to Tsonga in Wimbledon earlier this year is the best I can think of – sometimes, however great you are, the other team/player just rises to a level that no one would match, and it’s your bad fortune to be there at the time!

The influence of the referee in rugby

However, the tactical and technical nature of the game is not what I want to focus on in this post – that is something that rugby websites around the world will do enough of (see this example for a match report).

Instead, I thought I would give some of my thoughts on a topic that follows every rugby match, and that is the debate and criticism of the referee. The reality is that the referee in a rugby match has become incredibly influential in determining how the game is played. The result is that rugby has a growing credibility problem, where every match threatens to degenerate into objections about the performance of the referee, rather than assessment of the relative performances of its players. Whenever the result on the scoreboard can be dismissed as being the result of someone’s opinion or bias, there is a problem.

And this has happened in virtually every close match in the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which will be remembered not solely for the on-field performances, but for weak referee performances, some of which have been questionable, some outright poor. The most controversial of these probably came in the Quarter-final, where Australia beat South Africa 11-9 in a match that was later alleged to have been “bent” as part of the condemnation on the performance of referee Bryce Lawrence (more on my views of that allegation later)

Rugby presents a unique challenge in that the referee is required to make a specific decision about a contested tackle almost 200 times a match (once every 30 seconds), and this decision is multi-dimensional, instantaneous and open to interpretation. As a result, these decisions (and there are so many of them) influence the game to the extent that accusation, criticism and allegation are inevitable. It’s part of sport, certainly, but rugby seems more prone to accusations that “the ref helped ABC win” than any other sport. The problem is that from this point, it’s a short journey to allegations of fixing, corruption and cheating, when the problem may be simple incompetence or interpretation of the tackle rules of the sport. Either way, the credibility of a result is called into question.

This situation exists because so much of the contest in rugby revolves around competing for the ball after a tackle, in the breakdown contest. The attacking team needs to recycle possession quickly, whereas the defending team are at worst trying to slow it down to re-organize in defence, at best trying to win the ball on the ground. The result is a huge contest, the outcome of which goes a considerable distance towards determining the match result, but which is itself determined by how the referee interprets how both sets of players test the boundaries of the law (because this is what players will do, understandably – it’s like football players trying to play close to the offside line)

A unique situation?

I cannot think of another sport where the interpretation of the rule by an official so clearly influences the way that teams play the match. In football (soccer), the most contentious decisions are those when a penalty appeal is made, offsides is ruled, or when foul-play is adjudged. They are fairly clear-cut, and far less frequent than in rugby. And certainly, they can influence matches in a big way – I’m not downplaying how significant a referee decision can be. In the NFL, decisions can be similarly significant, but usually involve clear transgressions of rules. Tennis, there’s no influence, particularly now that television replays are used. And similarly, cricket umpires are often criticized and single decisions can be very influential, but with TV assistance, the incidence of these has certainly come down. If there is a sport that I’m missing, please let me know.

The rugby situation – too much interpretation

Rugby is different – the most contentious decision in rugby is one that is made on average twice a minute (five times a minute if you use ball in play time rather than total time), and it influences the next minute, rather than being a decision in isolation. Consider that a typical match has about 170 rucks (or contests for the ball in a tackle) , and you realize that there are probably 100 decisions (because not all are contested the same way) where the referee must interpret, in a split second, a dizzying array of laws, and where each decision has implications for what follows.

Different referees have a different sequence or approach to the decision, but they must judge, more or less in order: how the tackler interacts with the tackled player, when the tackle actually occurs, that the tackler releases the tackled player, that the tackled player releases the ball, when the ruck is formed, that players arriving to join the ruck remain on their feet, and that they join from the correct position and do not seal the ball off to prevent the contest. Add in that there are often multiple tacklers, so the referee has to decide who the tackler is, and you appreciate that within half a second, there’s a lot to judge. Then the next problem is that many times, four or five things happen more or less simultaneously, and so it really is a judgment call.

Ultimately, what the decision comes down to is a) assigning roles to the involved players, and b) deciding on the order in which events occur – every tackle has similar events, and the job of the referee is to sort through the order in which they occur, and if he sees a different order to you or I, then his decision will be accordingly different. And this is precisely what happens to make these decisions so contentious.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with the SA Sevens team for the last three seasons, and at every tournament, the IRB Head of Referees, all the coaches and technical staff of competing teams, and all the referees have a sit-down meeting a few days before the tournament starts. The meetings involve discussion around how the referees have been instructed to officiate and usually include clips of tackles and rucks from previous tournaments. Now bear in mind that this is Sevens, where the contest involves fewer players and with less congestion than you’d see in 15s, and then consider that even so, there rarely agreement in these meetings. The situation in 15-man rugby is of course even more complex (though the tackle contest may be more significant in 7s, but that’s for another discussion!)

For each clip, one coach will point to the tackler, another to the tackled player, another to the arriving player, another to the offside line, each one pointing out a different possible transgression PER RUCK! Mostly, it boils to disagreement about the order in which events happen, and which player should be entitled to do what. Eventually, even in slow-motion, it takes consensus or a swing vote to sort through the order of decisions that a referee must make. Even then, it’s often a 50-50 call as to whether a player released the tackled player or the ball and so on (if you are reading this without much knowledge of rugby and you’re confused at how complex it sounds, well, that’s exactly the point!)

A general approach to the decision and its implications

The reality is that rugby, by design, prioritizes the contest for the ball on the ground, and therefore the spotlight falls squarely on the man who must judge whether players are transgressing those laws. Simple on paper – there is a very distinct set of rules governing the tackle. But here’s the problem – the rules may be clear, but the judgment of them is not. So much is open to interpretation, and it is interpretation that happens in an instant, while on the run. The result is that a match can very, very easily look ‘influenced’ by the referee, who generally speaking, can take one of two extreme approaches to how they cut through this organized chaos to make a decision. Call it “conservative” vs “liberal” decision-making, but at its simplest, a referee is going to lean one of two ways.

The first approach is to over-police the contest (the conservative). The result is that the referee will appear to punish legitimate contesting for the ball, and will reward penalties frequently, forcing players to back right off, killing the contest for the ball. This favors the team in possession. Alternatively, the referee can under-police the breakdowns (liberal), and allow much more to go unpenalized.

Importantly, when this happens, the result is that the defending team will usually be favoured, because the referee will fail to prevent them from slowing the ball down, and slowing it down creates a disproportionate advantage. I believe this is what happened in the South Africa – Australia match, where the rucks were highly contested and too much was allowed on the ground. The result is that the defending team is advantaged. But, significantly, the problem in that particular match is that the defending team was mostly Australia.

The stats reveal this – South Africa had 131 rucks, compared to Australia’s 44. That is, for every one opportunity for South Africa to contest and slow down Australian ball, there were three chances for Australia to do so. So, by allowing too much contesting, the referee effectively gave Australia three times as many chances to push the limits of what was legal (and some would say exceed those limits).

When one team is as dominant as this (in terms of possession), and the more liberal referee is making the extreme “decision” to under-police and allow more, then it will always appear that he is deliberately biased. The reality is that if the possession was equal, and if both teams have the same number of rucks, then nobody would really notice the referee because BOTH TEAMS would get away with slowing the other team’s ball down! You’d get a very messy match, but the liberal referee would be far more “anonymous” because his leaning affects both sides equally.

Instead, this match was one-sided, and South Africa seemed to be on the receiving end of an unfair performance. I do think that Lawrence was poor, and I do think that his poor performance affected SA more, but it wasn’t deliberate. And as for match-fixing? Not based on decisions that didn’t go our way, no. Rather, I think that the referee was poor and didn’t do enough to control the rucks, but my point is that this may be because he was either instructed to allow the contest, and “over-applied” the instruction, or he just has a natural inclination to be liberal towards the contest.

In the case of Bryce Lawrence, it would not surprise me if he was told to allow a contest for the ball, because earlier in the tournament (in the Aus v Ireland match), he was criticized for penalizing Australia TOO MUCH at the breakdown. I strongly suspect that what happened next is that he was asked to be a little slower on the whistle, and he erred on the other extreme, and didn’t do enough. In the end, it appeared that South Africa were hard done by, but as I have said, that’s more because whenever one team dominates play, an error like Lawrence’s appears to favour the team without the ball (Australia).

Analyzing referees – navigating with a broken compass

It may not surprise you to learn, for example, that many international teams now attempt to analyze referee trends, so that they can attempt to guess whether a given referee is likely to decide one way or the other. At the most basic level, for example, you can look at whether a particular referee tends to award a penalty to the attacking team or the defending team to get an idea of that referee’s “in-built bias”. This partly reveals whether that referee’s priority in assessing the breakdown is whether the attacking team player releases the ball (penalty against the attacking team) or whether the tackler releases the player (defending team). You can then go further to see whether the referee is more or less lenient on the tackler or the tackled player and the arriving supporting players from either team.

The problem with this approach is two-fold. First, it’s subjective. When analysing clips, you have to judge not only what the referee does decide, but what he does not. This means you have to make a call yourself, and this brings us back to the point about disputable situations, especially because on TV, you don’t see what the referee does.

The second problem, more significant, is that the referees, in my experience anyway, are too unpredictable to code in this way. They are influenced by individual players and teams, and they change their approach too often, probably because they are very susceptible to suggestion and to the instructions coming down at them from their superiors.

For example, we tried this in the Sevens setup,but it was a futile quest, because the referees changed their approach too often. We worked out that what was happening was that the IRB were evaluating the referees and providing feedback on their performances (which is a good thing, of course), but this feedback was influencing the way that referee approached their next match. The result was that for each referee, if you plotted a graph showing how they made decisions, it would look like a zig-zag curve of mountain peaks and valleys – one week they leaned one way, the next week they went the other. And so trying to pre-empt how they would decide was like navigating with a broken compass.

Yet again, what this showed is the “unstable” nature of the decision-making process. Again, 170 decisions per match, each one in a fraction of a second at speed, with five or more variables to assess is going to introduce some “interpretation”, and the problem is that this can lean one way or another very easily.

Emotion – the inherent bias when working backwards

The other factor in all this is that emotion and passion are such significant influencers of how we interpret this watching on television. Fans (and even neutral spectators) have an inherent bias (it’s what makes them fans!) and the result is that when they assess a referee performance, they exist in a world of black and white – the referee is either right or wrong. Unfortunately for rugby, the decision is rarely black and white. It is grey, because of the previously mentioned decisions around judging the order in which events occur, and who does what in the tackle, and so there is always conflict between what fans see and what is actually happening on the ground.

Consider an example from football (soccer): A player scores a goal but is offside when he received the pass. The referee/assistant see this, and the goal is correctly disallowed. On first viewing, a fan who feels that his team has been robbed can make all manner of accusations including match-fixing and bias, but a replay will prove him wrong in most cases. Similarly, in tennis, the ball is either in or out, and in the Hawkeye era, there’s little dispute over those calls. NFL, there are debatable calls (pass interference, roughing the passer etc), but they’re much less frequent and different in nature to the ongoing, continuous rugby tackle calls.

Rugby, however, has a much more subjective decision happening 170 times a match, and that’s why I laboured the point about how “grey” the decision-making process can be earlier in this post. The end result is that people who watch matches can make the logic mistake of working backwards. They then interpret their observations to fit their theory, and of course their desired theory is that their team must win!

It’s a lot like bent science, in fact, in that you start out with the finding already “known” (in a fan’s mind, there is only one team that can win – they “know” the result before the match!). Then you have a series of “experiments”, also known as the tackle situation, where the outcome of each must be known too. The entire match is an observed experiment, and unwittingly, people mix emotion with interpretation and they will come up with accusations of bias because their observation will always fit their model. This is the danger of looking for proof of what you already believe, because you will always succeed at finding it!

Don’t trust the passionate perception

I made this mistake myself when working with the Sevens team. Every single decision was “wrong” as long as it went against our team! Such is the desire to win, that I stood on the sidelines and could not believe that a penalty should not be awarded to us. We lose the ball, it could only be because the other team cheated, and the referee missed it!

Only in the cold light of day, often the next morning, sitting in the hotel lobby, did I have the opportunity to review the match, sometimes to talk to the referee and he would explain what he was seeing as he made the call, and then it became much clearer to me that what was “obvious” to me was in fact “obvious” in exactly the other direction! I was wrong, pure and simple. But at the time I could not see that I was looking at it incorrectly. I learned to have a deep mistrust of my own perceptions in those emotional, stressful situations, and learned instead to wait, hold the opinion and rather decide when removed from the passion and emotion. It was a valuable lesson.

Sometimes, of course, the referees did make mistakes – more than once, I still believe we were wrongly judged and that it cost matches. Sometimes, referees even admitted it, and apologized. But we have also been the beneficiaries of the decisions, and that’s the result of rugby’s tackle rule. It certainly needs to be fixed, but this was a difficult lesson to learn, but an important one.

The reality is that fans need to step away from the emotion, and if they did, they may, in the case of South Africa anyway, recognize a few other reasons why it was New Zealand, and not us, lifting that trophy in Auckland yesterday.

The solution – analysis and a scorecard

As for the solution, my bias as a scientist is to measure and analyse, so that’s where I’d look for rugby’s problem. And transparency would help – no one really knows what the IRB does with referees – they are accused of being a “protected species”, which may not necessarily be a bad thing, but I do feel that some more open discussion would help. At the moment, it’s all left to the media, and in this day and age, the “media” now includes social networking, and so the public WILL have their say, and they are rarely going to be diplomatic in the absence of information. Rather control the perception by making some information available (it’s a lot like the Caster Semenya case – the secrecy around her testing and treatment only fueled the flames and allowed people to make up the “truth”. And that version is always worse than the real truth).

And for rugby, the solution to me is that the performance of referees needs to be evaluated more transparently. A panel of independent officials could analyze matches, producing a report on the match. This report could analyze every single one of the 200 decisions a referee has to make in a match. How many of the 200 were incorrect? 20? 30? And of those 30, how many were clear, conclusive errors, and how many were interpretive calls? One has to build in this human interpretation element, because it would be wrong to think that one can accurately judge off TV when the referee is 5m away from the decision he is making.

And of those conclusive errors, do they favor one team? If you find for example that 30 decisions out of 200 are wrong, and 90% of them go against one team, then you have some weight behind accusations of bias or fixing. But until that kind of evaluation is done, people speculate, and speculation is almost always worse than the truth.

Especially when the passions of die-hard fans are involved. Just ask any referee…

Ross

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