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How much better do you feel now that the AFL has issued another 'oopsie'?

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You know what will be funny? Umpire appreciation round will be a home game for us.
We become the 1st club to receive no frees in the last quarter.
 

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For the people claiming there's no identifiable pattern, have a look at the stats kept by Footywire.

Then look at the away stat. We've got the worst differential in the league all time. Third worst across the league for all time for all games.

Then focus in on the seasons where we're competitive. Weirdly it seems to get worse on the road.

The last three years? 79% in 2022, 76% in 2023, 91% in 2024 (still third or fourth worst in the league), and

31-46 so far this year. A remarkable 67%.

Collingwood haven't dipped below 100.

 
The Keays no goal cost us a finals spot. Who knows how we would have gone, and probably more importantly, how that missed opportunity to gain finals experience will impact us down the track? The Dawson no free also has to be considered in this.

Now, a team that is probably going to be one of our closest rivals has been handed four points (or at the very least two), that likely would have been ours.

The Draper one is not that significant in hindsight but still disappointing.

Now, any one of those in isolation could be dismissed as rub of the green and move on, but now it’s a pattern, and we’ve been consistently ****ed over.

Obviously, they can’t just give us points or screw over a different team by giving us a free ride one week, but surely there are some things:

  • Draft concessions
  • Favourable scheduling (e.g. look after us a bit in rounds 16 onwards)
  • More MCG games
  • Extra soft cap room

Given its cost us finals once, and will probably have a big impact on our ladder position this year, whether that means missing finals, top 4 or missing a home final, surely we’re within our rights to go to the AFL and ask for some of these things.
 
Obviously, they can’t just give us points or screw over a different team by giving us a free ride one week, but surely there are some things:

  • Draft concessions
  • Favourable scheduling (e.g. look after us a bit in rounds 16 onwards)
  • More MCG games
  • Extra soft cap room

Given its cost us finals once, and will probably have a big impact on our ladder position this year, whether that means missing finals, top 4 or missing a home final, surely we’re within our rights to go to the AFL and ask for some of these things.

This is absolutely what the club did do, and its the complete opposite of what we need to do. Trading literally being screwed out of our season for fixtures.

They need to demand the issue is fixed. It's not deniable a bias exists, the numbers play it out. So, put it on the AFL to find a solution. Does it involve more direct access to the AFL umpires so that we have the same familiarity that the likes of Collingwood have? I think so.

Does it involve the umpires being required to be trained, and assessed, based upon how they perform in these situations? Almost certainly.

Does whatever it is involve us focusing our efforts on it, and making sure its seen as a problem to be fixed? Of course it does.
 
This is absolutely what the club did do, and its the complete opposite of what we need to do. Trading literally being screwed out of our season for fixtures.

They need to demand the issue is fixed. It's not deniable a bias exists, the numbers play it out. So, put it on the AFL to find a solution. Does it involve more direct access to the AFL umpires so that we have the same familiarity that the likes of Collingwood have? I think so.

Does it involve the umpires being required to be trained, and assessed, based upon how they perform in these situations? Almost certainly.

Does whatever it is involve us focusing our efforts on it, and making sure its seen as a problem to be fixed? Of course it does.

I’m not saying those things shouldn’t happen or be asked for. But the AFL aren’t actually doing anything for us in asking the AFL to fix this in future. That’s the bare minimum expectation I would have thought.

I’m saying on top of that we should be asking for some form of compensation for the impact that these consistent mistakes have had on the club.
 
For the people claiming there's no identifiable pattern, have a look at the stats kept by Footywire.

Then look at the away stat. We've got the worst differential in the league all time. Third worst across the league for all time for all games.

Then focus in on the seasons where we're competitive. Weirdly it seems to get worse on the road.

The last three years? 79% in 2022, 76% in 2023, 91% in 2024 (still third or fourth worst in the league), and

31-46 so far this year. A remarkable 67%.

Collingwood haven't dipped below 100.

Doesn't this link mostly just show that home teams are favoured in umpiring decisions, in particular when there's a parochial crowd (i.e. games where there is a travelling visitor side)? This certainly seems to be true and also seems intuitive. It's far less controversial a claim than that the umpires specifically target the Adelaide Crows.

For the last four consecutive seasons we have a positive free kick differential at home and a negative differential away. The three seasons before that (2021, 2020, 2019) we had a positive differential both home and away, but a bigger gap at home. The three years before that are back to positive at home and negative away. Back in 2010 we had a one off year with a better free kick record away than at home, but that's an obvious outlier.

This is pretty much true of most non-Victorian teams as far as I can see. They get the rub of the green at home and don't get it away, or at least get it more at home than away. For example Freo have had a better free kick differential at home than away 18 of the last 20 years, and a positive free kick differential at home 15 of the last 20 years. This is similar to us, slightly worse actually.

West Coast are 19-1 for a better differential at home than away, and have had a positive home differential and a negative away differential in 11 of the last 20 years. I just looked at 10 years for Port but they have had a higher differential at home than away every year of the last 10, and a total positive home differential against a negative away differential in 7 of 10 years.

Collingwood's positive umpiring treatment is probably downstream of the fact that they mostly get to play in front of a home crowd, even when they are the away team. This is a fairness issue that sits alongside the fact that they travel less than other clubs for sure but doesn't require umpires to be targeting the Crows.
 

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Doesn't this link mostly just show that home teams are favoured in umpiring decisions, in particular when there's a parochial crowd (i.e. games where there is a travelling visitor side)? This certainly seems to be true and also seems intuitive. It's far less controversial a claim than that the umpires specifically target the Adelaide Crows.

For the last four consecutive seasons we have a positive free kick differential at home and a negative differential away. The three seasons before that (2021, 2020, 2019) we had a positive differential both home and away, but a bigger gap at home. The three years before that are back to positive at home and negative away. Back in 2010 we had a one off year with a better free kick record away than at home, but that's an obvious outlier.

This is pretty much true of most non-Victorian teams as far as I can see. They get the rub of the green at home and don't get it away, or at least get it more at home than away. For example Freo have had a better free kick differential at home than away 18 of the last 20 years, and a positive free kick differential at home 15 of the last 20 years. This is similar to us, slightly worse actually.

West Coast are 19-1 for a better differential at home than away, and have had a positive home differential and a negative away differential in 11 of the last 20 years. I just looked at 10 years for Port but they have had a higher differential at home than away every year of the last 10, and a total positive home differential against a negative away differential in 7 of 10 years.

Collingwood's positive umpiring treatment is probably downstream of the fact that they mostly get to play in front of a home crowd, even when they are the away team. This is a fairness issue that sits alongside the fact that they travel less than other clubs for sure but doesn't require umpires to be targeting the Crows.

If it was just home / away you would expect them over a significant enough sample size to roughly balance out. We play as many (or more) games with a crowd advantage as we play away. And yet they do not even roughly present as occuring at the same rates.

If you look beyond the raw decisions metric to the 'games where you've received more than the other team', we get the majority at home 53% of the time, compared to 30% of the time away.

West Coast, by comparator, receives more frees 71 percent of the time at home and 41 percent away.

We get less frees as a raw metric, we get less games with an advantage, we have repeat failures to pay them in critical moments.

On basically every measure our treatment is around the league worst, often by a significant margin.

There is absolutely nothing that is normal about what happens to us with umpiring. This isn't just losing fans gripes. The data supports the complaint.
 
Wouldn’t garner enough votes to bother
Actually you just triggered another Silvers fact from weekends brunch:

Crows have 700,000 supporters living in SA
And another 300,000 around Oz
1m total

Not sure where this relatively sits but was a bit higher than I was expecting. Not sure they are all as fanatical as the mob on here but :)
 

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Actually you just triggered another Silvers fact from weekends brunch:

Crows have 700,000 supporters living in SA
And another 300,000 around Oz
1m total

Not sure where this relatively sits but was a bit higher than I was expecting. Not sure they are all as fanatical as the mob on here but :)
I think the same person does Murphy’s game review.
 
I will say this, it has made me more passionate about footy again. I ****ing hate the Gold Coast suns, drowned in AFL gifts, and they might just make the finals this year.

i hate them episode 2 GIF by Star Wars
 
This is absolutely what the club did do, and its the complete opposite of what we need to do. Trading literally being screwed out of our season for fixtures.
And let's be honest. We were the highest scoring team in 2023. We were going to get a somewhat decent fixture regardless.

Basically the AFL gave us maybe 1 or 2 primetime slots we weren't already earmarked for in exchange for cheating us out of finals.

We got to feel like we'd won something, and they give us something they were already happy to anyway.
 
And let's be honest. We were the highest scoring team in 2023. We were going to get a somewhat decent fixture regardless.

Basically the AFL gave us maybe 1 or 2 primetime slots we weren't already earmarked for in exchange for cheating us out of finals.

We got to feel like we'd won something, and they give us something they were already happy to anyway.

Did getting extra primetime slots make our fixture harder too?

We played Brisbane, Essendon, Geelong, Hawthorn, Port and Sydney twice

There is no way the AFL was going to give us those extra prime time games against West Coast and North
 
Actually you just triggered another Silvers fact from weekends brunch:

Crows have 700,000 supporters living in SA
And another 300,000 around Oz
1m total

Not sure where this relatively sits but was a bit higher than I was expecting. Not sure they are all as fanatical as the mob on here but :)
I feel like the Crows have a lot of "supporters" by default though. People who'd tick "I support the Adelaide Crows" on a form but don't actually watch or follow football.

I know in my workplace there's at least 3 "Crows supporters" who wouldn't have watched a game in the last 3 years and wouldn't be able to pick Jake Soligo out of a line up.
 

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