Home town advantage 'scientifically' proven

No it's not. Maybe the All Blacks are just a better disciplined side? You would have to compare with the All Blacks away penalty count just for starters. If you really wanted to prove something like this you would have to run an incredibly complex regression. You can't just look at the data and observe a relationship because correlation does not equal causation.

 

Going from Durban to Christchurch probably takes about 18 hours plus any stop overs. Big difference from that to traveling within your own country.

 

True technically. But in ice hockey if you aren't incurring enough penalties usually your coach gets on your case for not playing aggressively enough and I think the ABs do push the limits. Nonethelss you are technically correct. There is a test to solve this and that is if I do the penalty counts for every game this season for the super rugby teams for all the teams. There is no way that they will all just be more disciplined when they play at home and reckless on the road, you are either a disciplined team or you are not. That is not a comment by the way on your suggestion that I should look at the ABs away record for penalties it is just a comment of why the potential analysis I am proposing would be either definitive or if not definitive very strong evidence at the least.

 

But you surely accept there are other factors involved in home ground advantage, even if the referee was a significant factor? If you accept that travel is likely to be disadvantageous then how do you know that doesn't cause lopsided penalty counts? Teams that travel are more likely to be tired and tired teams are more likely to give away penalties.

I don't see how, even if you can prove a relationship exists, you can isolate penalty counts and home town refereeing decisions.

 

If you are given the choice of a forward who scores 100 points with 200 minutes on the season vs one with 100 points and 30 penalty minutes. You will, depending on the mix of your team, usually take the guy with more penalty minutes as it means he does more hits and gets into fights. It means he is a power forward.

edit - also if you don't know hockey why are you debating it?

 

I'd like to see an article that contains proof and not just conjecture. All he's talked about here are the results and not the cause... you're just extrapolating to suit your own agenda

 

DWTA - re-read the OP and his words that I bolded.

 

Yeah and where does he offer proof for that?

 

The words that you bolded directly support what Boy Blunder is saying. The words you bolded start off with "Tucker also said that the referee could". I think that is quite clearly conjecture. The article doesn't state "the results clearly proved."

All the article, and indeed Mr Tucker, is saying is that playing at home will give the Crusaders a 10 point advantage and that advantage could be down to several possible factors. One of those factors could be the referee favouring the home side; or it could not be due to that at all.