Analysis Some Rather Eyebrow Raising Free Kick Facts...

[Infamy]

Hopefully if people want to give opinions on umpiring they go to the other thread. And if people want to discuss facts and data about free kicks or other adjudications, they come to this thread.

Even when you explain it that way, it's still the same thing

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Even when you explain it that way, it's still the same thing

I knew you’d see it my way.

 

[Grockadoc]

Got no issue with the frees we give away. They're almost always there. What I take issue with is the inconsistency of the calls. What we give away, teams get away with. Umps only pay it one way against us.

 

[Tackle Bag]

Generally doesn’t matter as long as you make finals because they umpire differently once finals start. The minor stuff doesn’t get called as often.

 

[Tiger71]

Sick of the sooking about the umpiring on here. There is no secret conspricay against us. Even Baker said the other day it's mostly just the way we play and tackle.

The good teams still win.....

Backer was referring to the free kicks we give away, I am 100% OK with that, as mostly they are right, we do push the edge. What some just dont seem to get its the free kicks FOR, we get over 3 times less then anybody else. I read that only 4 clubs have every had a negative free kicks for and against but we are unique since records been kept that our free kicks for equals our free kicks against. That just does not happen.

You need to understand this fairly big point, our game style does not effect free kicks the opposition should be giving us. That is why I fully believe the umpires, particularly in the first 8 to 9 rounds were umpiring to the jumper against us. They were so red hot to ping us that they lose focus on what the opposition is doing illegally and the stats back that up. Teams free kicks they normally concede in most cases gets reduced by half from what they normally give during games. Again its because umpires in my belief saw so much vision before the season started about the rule changes, and all that vision was mainly with a tiger vision as the reason they have been brought in, they have instinctively just focused on us.

Data does not lie

 

[THE_GUN]

What pisses me off is not the free kicks we give away and the free kicks we dont get but we also have head office trying to stop us from winning by changing rules to stop Richmond

6-6-6
stand

these new rules have been introduced to stop our game - Hocking effectively said it that it has been introduced to stop richmonds dominance

 

[sante]

What I find the funniest on here is the fact so many of you believe the AFL, media and umpires are out to get us. Like, just think about it for one second. You all sound crazy. It’s absolutely ridiculous

 

[Bird Man]

What I find the funniest on here is the fact so many of you believe the AFL, media and umpires are out to get us. Like, just think about it for one second. You all sound crazy. It’s absolutely ridiculous

its made easier to believe it when Hocking comes out and says he changed the rules (standing) because of us.

If we want to get better calls we need to play the way the AFL thinks the game will be more entertaining. Clean fast and big forwards taking marks. Chaos football isnt what the AFL wants and it will be weeded out just like the super flood was. They would have been pissed that the Cats lost cause they are the control team last year.

But to come full circle there is a bias cause Cats and Demons literally played our brand of football agaisnt us and we got punished for playing it and they didnt.

 

[Do the Dew]

its made easier to believe it when Hocking comes out and says he changed the rules (standing) because of us.

If we want to get better calls we need to play the way the AFL thinks the game will be more entertaining. Clean fast and big forwards taking marks. Chaos football isnt what the AFL wants and it will be weeded out just like the super flood was. They would have been pissed that the Cats lost cause they are the control team last year.

But to come full circle there is a bias cause Cats and Demons literally played our brand of football agaisnt us and we got punished for playing it and they didnt.

When the 666 rule was brought in, the team that set up 666 the least in the previous season was...drumroll...Richmond. Something like 2% of all center bounces. Therefore this rule theoretically penalized us more than any other team.

Changes to the kick-in rule hurt us too. We're obviously renowned for our forward pressure and ability to lock the ball inside 50, repeat entries etc. Giving teams a free out by letting them sprint 30m up the ground after a point definitely hurts this defensive setup.

And as you say, Hocking is ON RECORD stating that he didn't like the way Richmond/Cotchin was pushing the boundaries (i.e. not breaking any rules) when standing on the mark, and that this was a major factor contributing to the rule change.

 

[tigers_of_old_08]

Backer was referring to the free kicks we give away, I am 100% OK with that, as mostly they are right, we do push the edge. What some just dont seem to get its the free kicks FOR, we get over 3 times less then anybody else. I read that only 4 clubs have every had a negative free kicks for and against but we are unique since records been kept that our free kicks for equals our free kicks against. That just does not happen.

Data does not lie

The following data is 4 rounds old but if somebody can come up with the latest it would be handy.

 

[Lord of the Wings]

What I find the funniest on here is the fact so many of you believe the AFL, media and umpires are out to get us. Like, just think about it for one second. You all sound crazy. It’s absolutely ridiculous

Booooooooopoo

 

[Toadvine]

The following data is 4 rounds old but if somebody can come up with the latest it would be handy.

View attachment 1156885

Prepare yourself

 

[tigs2010]

Prepare yourself
View attachment 1156890

 

[box070]

Prepare yourself
View attachment 1156890

I’m not into umpire bashing or conspiracies or any of that rubbish. I do believe teams and players are umpired differently but out of human nature as opposed to spite.
But * me this is ****ed. 3 times the amount of frees given away then the 2nd worst team means something needs to be addressed. Whether it’s clarification from the UD or we need to look at what we do internally. Too many cheap kicks here. Surprised we are better then 50% WL

 

[Dunger]

We'd be undefeated if we were 0 to -10 on free kicks


Swans kicked lots of goals from frees

Would have won against Port and WCE easily

 

[tiger_tough]

We'd be undefeated if we were 0 to -10 on free kicks


Swans kicked lots of goals from frees

Would have won against Port and WCE easily

Which goals against Eagles from free kicks werent there? I can't think of any? Allen missed that shocking dangerous tackle free.

CCJs 50 was a bad a 50m penalty as there is on the other hand.

 

[Toadvine]

I’m not into umpire bashing or conspiracies or any of that rubbish. I do believe teams and players are umpired differently but out of human nature as opposed to spite.
But fu** me this is f’ed. 3 times the amount of frees given away then the 2nd worst team means something needs to be addressed. Whether it’s clarification from the UD or we need to look at what we do internally. Too many cheap kicks here. Surprised we are better then 50% WL

I'm with you. I don't think there is a vast conspiracy from the umpiring department but I think when we are such an outlier someone needs to ask the club and the AFL directly what they think explains such a big issue for our team.

I do think the 6-6-6, new kick out rule and the stand rule were deliberately targeted at our strengths though and the evidence shows that our team was the most effected by those changes.

 

[Do the Dew]

Which goals against Eagles from free kicks werent there? I can't think of any? Allen missed that shocking dangerous tackle free.

CCJs 50 was a bad a 50m penalty as there is on the other hand.

Both teams kick 2 goals directly from free kicks in the Eagles game.

The Swans one they kicked 6 to our 3.

Overall we have kicked 20 goals directly from frees, and have had 31 kicked against us this year.

 

[rfctigerarmy]

Norf dont have the ball 3/4 of a match and still have more frees

 

[VB_longneck]

Generally doesn’t matter as long as you make finals because they umpire differently once finals start. The minor stuff doesn’t get called as often.

why dont they umpire the same all year ? what kind of competition puts away the whistle for one month a year ?

 

[beema limapep]

Prepare yourself
View attachment 1156890

 

[Tiger Toffee]

What it comes down too is, how many times have you watched other games and gone " we would never get that " or " that would be a free against us "

richmond player gets mark or free: play on play on after 1 second
oppo team: 10 seconds later = move it on

We tackle and the whistle feels like an eternity before it's blown for HTB
We get tackled and the whistle gets blown instantly for HTB.

 

[SplintWhisky]

I posted this in the Salt Mine thread as some comments from opposition supporters had been highlighted including claims of umpire bias IN FAVOUR of Richmond. I think this is more than worthy of its own thread. There is some quite remarkable data when viewed in both the current and historical context…..

Here are some quick Richmond 2021 free kick stats:

1. Despite Richmond mysteriously gaining a good run with the umps two weeks running v Crows and Bombers to the overall tune of 36 v 24 across those games, Richmond’s overall season figure of less than 10 free kicks for for every 13 free kicks against remains diabolical. It is a worse relative free kick differential than any team has recorded across a whole season in the AFL era.( Records not available in 5 seasons during the mid 90’s.)

2. Also, Richmond 2021 remain one of I think only four teams dating all the way back to 1965 who have both received the least free kicks for and given the most free kicks against. Remembering that this dubious distinction was much easier to “achieve" when there were less teams in the competition.

3. The Tigers have played 7 games v other top 8 teams during 2021. The overall free kick count in these crucial matches stands at an astonishing 97 free kicks for, and 162 free kicks against. Roughly an average of 14 per game for, and 23 against.

4. If you remove the one game Richmond won from the above top 8 sample, v Bulldogs when Richmond actually won the free kick count…..in the 6 losing matches of the season, all v top 8 teams….free kicks 76 for, and 145 against. That is an average of roughly 13 free kicks for, and 24 free kicks against. Those figures are almost unbelievable. Even more so given in the 7 other matches Richmond has played it has a net positive free kick differential. In the losses v top 8 team sample, Richmond has a ratio of 10 free kicks for, for every 19 free kicks against. And remember, this is just free kicks, it doesn’t account for other adjudications such as 50 metre penalties, and marks…and we cannot tell how many of these adjudications are resulting in goals for and against.

5. It is not like Richmond’s opponents in these losing matches are generally strong free kick performers. They sit 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th 12th and 13th on the free kick differential ladder. If you removed the Richmond games from those opponents’ seasons, they would on average slide roughly 2-3 positions each on that table. So in reality Richmond have recorded these massive negative free kick differentials against teams who would otherwise sit roughly 9th, 10th, 11th, 14th, 15th and 16th on the free kick differential table. That is, bar the Richmond games they are a sample of much worse than average AFL teams for free kick differentials. Amazing.

6. So maybe all top 8 teams record big negative free kick differentials in their losing games….

Demons, 2 losing games are 41-52.
Bulldogs, 2 losing games are 33-36.
Cats, 3 losing games are 58-70.
Lions, 4 losing games are 89-101.
Power, 4 losing games are 89-85
Swans, 5 losing games are 76-99
Eagles, 5 losing games are 88-94
Richmond, 6 losing games are 75-145

Richmond’s free kick deficit in their 6 losing games (-70) is greater than the combined free kick deficit for all other top 8 teams in their 25 combined losing games, which stands at -63. Remembering that in winning games Richmond would sit quite close to these teams for free kick differential. Those are facts that if you stumbled across them randomly would shock you.

7. No other top 8 team has a free kick differential drop between their winning and losing games of anything like Richmond’s drop of over -12 free kicks differential between wins and losses. On average the amount the other top 8 teams drop in free kick differential between their winning games and losing games appears to be roughly in the minus 2 to minus 3 range.

8. The only other team across a whole season in the AFL era with a free kick differential as high as our current 2021 season figure of -5.1 per game….was Richmond 2018, coincidentally the only time since 2017 Richmond failed to win the Premiership, so far….

This is a long post that is unfortunately meaningless. A high free kick differential is a useless metric if you are looking for any bias. If we were to take your example to the logical conclusion then you would be stating that there was a conspiracy against a team if they were purposely giving away free kicks. A free kick differential doesn't matter if you are try to establish bias, what establishes bias is taking a look at the free kicks that the opposition give away and then comparing those numbers to the amount of free kicks that are given away when they play Richmond. I have two posts in the Umpiring threads (see below)

View attachment 1137024

Ok so I was bored and decided to go full sperg for our season 21. Now I work in Finance and am not a statistician by any means of the imagination so this is very quick standard deviation workings.

Above are 3 tables. The top 2 are free kicks given away by the team when facing Richmond and GWS. The bottom is from the Brisbane game this past week.

Way to read the top 2 Tables. The table on the Left is Richmond games and the Table on the Right is GWS games. What is shown is the free kicks given away by their opponent.
Key:
FA: Frees against
Avg FA: Average frees against
Diff: The difference between the frees against vs that teams frees against for the season to round 10 (e.g in Round 1 Carlton gave away 15 free kicks and their season average is 20)
St Dev from mean: How many Standard Deviations away from the mean that figure is (basically the Z - Score)

Highlights from the top table:
- Over the season, the opponents we have played have given on average close to 1 standard deviation less frees when playing us
- The only team that has been screwed by the umps against us is Hawthorn who gave away close to 1 standard deviation more free kicks when playing against us
- GWS' (who have the best average free kick differential in the league at the moment) opponents on average give away .02 standard deviations more free kicks when playing against the Giants

Now I have only decided to show the Frees Against here because if I were to show Free For the opposition then the standard argument of "It is Richmond's game style to give away more frees" can be easily made to hand wave any results. So what the above table shows is that when teams play us they are on average guaranteed to give away close to 1 St Dev less frees. So to put this into context, this week against Adelaide we can expect around 14 - 15 free kicks for Richmond (Adelaide averages 20.5 frees against for the season and the St Dev is 5) based on the previous 10 games. Now I am not 100% sure if this is correct to show a bias, however it does to me. This is because the figures in the above tables are based solely on frees given away by teams when playing either Richmond or GWS. Basically when you play GWS you are more than likely going to give away your season's average in frees and when you play Richmond you are going to give away less frees.

Highlights from the Bottom Table
- Richmond gave away 1.8 St Dev more free kicks than average to Brisbane and received the season average
- Brisbane gave away .8 St Dev less free kicks whilst also receiving 2.2 St Dev more free kicks than their season average

We got bent over and told to bite the pillow because the umps are going in dry up at the Gabba. I believe that in this game, Brisbane, in theory, had a frees for tally that only 2.3% of their matches the season could beat. For frees against, only approximately 15.9% of their games this season will they give away less free kicks.

Conclusions
Like I have previously said, I do not like to look at the frees that Richmond give away. A lot of them (in my opinion) are there and it is stupid to cry about the 2-4 frees a game that are slightly dubious/not there. However, Richmond just don't get looked at by the umps when you compare them to their opposition. You can look at the free kick differential tallies that some people publish, but they are flawed. Having a huge differential like we do can easily be because we play on the edge and give away more legitimate frees. However, looking at the frees given away by the opposition when they play us and then comparing that to their season averages does yield some data for a conversation. Namely this, the opposition are routinely giving a decent amount less than their average free kicks away when they play Richmond. This can only lead me to conclude that there has to be some sort of bias here.

I would love for a Journo to work with Champion Data or even the club themselves to actually verify if I am correct or wrong and then to do a multi-year analysis on just the frees against. If Richmond were able to do this for all clubs and then bring it to the AFL's attention then I think an interesting conversation should be had.

TL DR: When Teams play Richmond, they give a decent amount less free kicks away than they normally would in 2021.

AND

So I had a shower thought about the above analysis and thought of the arguments against it and the most prominent one was "Well maybe Richmond games are less officiated than the rest of the league". Well here we are:

AFL Average Total Free Kicks: 38.58 per game
Standard Deviation: 7.03

Total Average Free Kicks in Richmond Games: 38.40
Standard Deviation: 4.92

Richmond games vs the AFL Benchmark

View attachment 1139155

Again, I am not a statistician, however when you line these numbers up with numbers in the below 2 tables you can see that when there are lower free kicks than the average, the majority of the time the team we are playing gets more than there average by a <1 St Dev but will give away close to 1 or more St Dev less

View attachment 1139158

Again, this would be interesting stats that would be great if a journo did a proper analysis of it.

In summary of the above to establish bias you have to demonstrate that the teams give away a significant amount less free kicks when they play us. Usually they do (up to post the brisbane game).

 

[RobsJourney]

Which goals against Eagles from free kicks werent there? I can't think of any? Allen missed that shocking dangerous tackle free.

CCJs 50 was a bad a 50m penalty as there is on the other hand.

The thing with the CCJ 50m - which yes was bad - was that he already had the ball. His shot was gettable enough that it might not have mattered, but yes, it still made a possible 1 pointer into a guaranteed 6, so it was lucky.

The issue with the Eagles game though is that they got given the ball a lot for free compared to us, when they didn't otherwise have it, especially in a lot of crucial moments in the second half, not just directly in front of goal mind you. A case in point being Allen who thankfully missed, but the real bad one was the Waterman free. If you ask my partner she'd confirm I basically said out loud before he kicked the goal that "he is gonna kick this free goal and it's gonna cost us the game". Sure enough he squeezes in a shot from 50...

How the ump called a throw on Grimes is beyond me and I've yet to see another angle to show that it wasn't a legal handball, especially when you compare it to some of the actual throws Joel Selwood pulls out. The whistle was so quick to go from so far away and Grimes clearly couldn't believe it, it just makes you wonder wow, were the umps really not trying to help the Eagles there?

There were also two other moments that really made me raise my eyebrow and worry we'd be in for a tough night. Forgive me if memory has changed these moments ever so slightly.

1. The ball bounced toward CCJ in our forward 50, he raised a single hand to take possession and, as the ball made contact with his hand, he was immediately ripped away from it by an Eagles player. They called holding the *ingg ball.

2. Graham laid a great tackle in the centre and the ball spilled loose, no reward, as it spilled out he placed a single hand to stop it and was immediately buried by one or two Eagles. They called holding the *ingg ball.

I know the rule is a bit cooked now, in fact VERY cooked, but those two instances made me go, geez, they were some quick whistles, we're in trouble tonight. That is NOT Richmond's playstyle effecting the count, that's just 2 very unfair frees that the umpires couldn't wait to pay. It adds fuel to the fire when it comes to us not being able to help but think umps are biased against us, as ridiculous as it may be.

 

[Meteoric Rise]

Both teams kick 2 goals directly from free kicks in the Eagles game.

The Swans one they kicked 6 to our 3.

Overall we have kicked 20 goals directly from frees, and have had 31 kicked against us this year.

That is a very big discrepancy the 20 goals for from frees v 31 against.

Our general rate is frees against = 132% of frees for. Buf if you remove those that resulted in goals it is 188 for and 243 against. So our ratio other than frees resulting in goals = 12.9 against for every 10 for. But frees resulting in goals are running at 15.5 against for every 10 for. Also, we have scored 165 goals v the opposition 155. So once you factor that in, in relative terms compared to overall scoring we are conceding 16.5 goals from free kicks for every 10 goals we receive from free kicks. That is a massive disparity.