POOR AWAY FORM DUE TO LACK OF MALE HORMONES
The British Psychological Society
annual conference in Blackpool yesterday was told that it had been shown that levels of the male hormone were
roughly 50 per cent higher in players before a home game than they are before
they play away.
Dr Nick Neave and Dr Sandy Wolfson, of Northumbria University, said the findings
suggested that the well-known phenomenon of the “home advantage” is
driven by a primal instinct on the part of players to defend their territory
and cannot be attributed simply to greater crowd support at the home ground.
The researchers took saliva samples from the under-19 squad of a Premiership
team before they played an extreme rival team and before a match against a team
considered to be a moderate rival. Samples were collected before a home game,
an away game and at a training session.
They found that testosterone levels rose from an average of 100 picograms per
millilitre before away games and during training sessions to an average of 153.7
picograms per millilitre before home games. Levels were considerably highest
when playing against the close rival at home (167 picograms) and lowest when
playing against the moderate rival away (83).
The biggest changes in testosterone levels were seen amongst goalkeepers. “It’s
the survival instinct. Animals have evolved by natural selection to fight harder
for their territory,” Dr Neave said.
IT IS TRUE REF'S ARE BIASED
Football teams notorious for playing dirty are far more likely to be penalised
by referees than those reputed to be clean players, new research has shown.
The findings suggest that teams with bad disciplinary records, such as Arsenal
and Leeds United, may find themselves at an unfair disadvantage even before
the first kick of the game.
Dr Marc Jones, of Staffordshire University, told the same conference that the results may also add to growing
pressure for the greater use of a “fourth referee” on the sidelines
to review match officials’ decisions on a video screen showing instant
replays of the action.
Dr Jones and his team showed 50 video clips of incidents from professional football
games, all involving a team in a blue strip and all showing a challenge for
the ball, to 38 referees from semi-professional football. The referees were
asked to decide whether a foul occurred in each of the clips and, if so, whether
they would issue a red or yellow card.
Before the experiment, half of the referees had been told that the blue team
had a reputation for foul and aggressive play. The clips were all drawn from
matches played in the Argentinian equivalent of the Premiership to ensure that
none of the teams or individual players were recognisable by the officials.
The results showed that both groups of referees identified the same number of
fouls. But the referees who had been primed with bad information about the blues,
gave them 50 per cent more red and yellow cards than the completely neutral
officials.
Dr Jones said that the apparent bias of the referees was likely to occur because
when people were required to make fast decisions under great pressure, they
were more likely to make use of prior knowledge than to rely solely on what
they had actually witnessed in their immediate environment. “Information
they have stored in their brain influences the responses that they make,”
he said.
Source The Times by Alexandra Frean