鈥淚T鈥橲 only a game,鈥� some might say. But with 40,000 people screaming at your every decision, it takes a special sort of person to keep a cool head. Despite their reputation for stoic impartiality, however, it seems that even referees are swayed by the baying mob. A researcher in Britain has shown that a hostile crowd can make them think twice about penalising the home side.
Playing at home can give a team a huge advantage. For example, soccer teams in the English Premier League win almost twice as often at home as they do away.
But where does that advantage come from? Some say that travelling unsettles the away players, or that home players use their better knowledge of the ground to their advantage. And sports psychologist Sandy Wolfson of the University of Northumbria has found that footballers are more pumped up with testosterone before a home match than they are at an away game (see www.newscientist.com). 鈥淢ost theorists had assumed that the crowd has a direct effect on the players,鈥� she says.
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Now Alan Nevill at the University of Wolverhampton has come up with evidence that another factor may be at work. Nevill and his team showed video footage of 47 tackles from a Premier League match to a group of qualified referees and asked them to judge whether each one was a foul or not. The 40 refs were split into two groups: one could hear the crowd鈥檚 reactions, while the other watched silent footage. Neither group saw the original official鈥檚 decision.
With the sound turned up, the refs were more reluctant to penalise the home team. They judged 15 per cent fewer of the tackles by home players as illegal. Interestingly, the decisions made by refs who could hear the crowd were more in line with those made by the original match official.
Nevill, a keen supporter of this year鈥檚 FA Cup finalists Arsenal, found that even experienced refs were swayed by the crowd. 鈥淓veryone got conned the same way,鈥� he says. He is convinced that referee bias is the main explanation for home advantage. In other sports such as golf, players show no advantage when competing on their own turf.
Nevill, who will report his results in Psychology of Sport and Exercise, thinks that the match officials are intimidated by the noise made by the home crowd. 鈥淭o get the crowd off their back they wave play on,鈥� he says. Wolfson says it is unlikely that referees feel threatened, but suspects they may be swayed by the crowd when making a close call. 鈥淩eferees tend to be very robust and confident. But when 40,000 voices shout, 鈥楬andball!鈥� this just might turn a 50:50 decision,鈥� she adds.