As in any sport, rugby referees decisions are often criticised, and the question of the influence of a referees nationality in decision making is often hotly debated. Researchers at Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and Heythrop College, University of London, have shown that such a bias can indeed exist. Studying rugby matches between opposing clubs from different countries, they found that when the referee had the same nationality as one of the teams playing, he tended to advantage this team versus the opposition.
This is the controversial report in full, from Cambridge Judge Business School:
Looking at two major rugby competitions in both rugby codes – Super 14 (Australian-New Zealand- South Africa Rugby Union competition) and Super League (British and French Rugby League competition) – Dr Lionel Page (Cambridge Judge Business School) and Dr Katie Page (Heythrop College) revealed that referees give a significant edge to teams of their own nationality in these competitions.
Specifically, referees were less likely to penalise the team of their own nationality, and more frequently penalise the team of a different nationality. For instance, in Super League, a British team received significantly fewer cards when it played against a French team than when it played against another British team. On the contrary, the French team received significantly more cards for offences which were actually classified as more benign afterwards by disciplinary committees using video evidence.
In addition, the study found that the foreign team is more likely to see its try attempt denied by the referee. The timing of decisions also played a major role. Decisions in favour of the team from the referee’s nationality were noted to take place at the most crucial moments in particular when the scoreline was close, while the foreign team received favourable decisions in situations when they were less likely to affect the final outcome of the game.
One of the most striking results of this study is that the compound effect of these decisions makes a large difference to the final outcome of the match. Looking at matches against a team from similar ability the researchers found that in the Super 14, the home team would win only in 38% of the cases when the referee is from the nationality of the opposition while it would win in 91% of the cases when the referee was from their own nationality.
In the case of the Super League, the French team won only in 38% of the cases when the referee was British while it won in 75% when the referee was Australian or French.
In addition, the researchers predicted that such a bias should be higher when the level of scrutiny of the match refereeing was lower. To test this hypothesis, they looked at matches broadcast live on TV where referees faced a close scrutiny from TV commentators using video replay and where numerous try decisions were made by a video referee. Comparing Super League matches broadcast live on British televisions and those not broadcast on live television, they indeed found that on comparable matches with an English referee, the French team won in only 30% of matches that were not shown on TV, whilst they won 59% of matches when the match was on live on British TV.
Overall the size of these effects is so large that in practise the outcome of the competition is affected. In the Super 14 the referees biases may on average tend to even out, however the final result of a close competition may well depend on a match won or lost with a referee having the nationality of one of the teams. In the specific case of the British Super League where one French team is most of the time refereed by British referees, this bias implies that over the 2006-2009 period the French could have won nearly twice as many matches with a neutral refereeing.
These results are of interest for other club competitions which present cross national matches like the Magners League which will welcome Italian teams next season and the NRL which includes a New Zealand team in a mostly Australian competition. The reality of these competitions often prevents refereeing to be neutral given the
available pool of referees. Dr Lionel Page suggests “For these cross national competitions where neutral referees are not available, one of the easiest changes to implement could be the `challenge call’ like in NFL, NBA or cricket, where a team can challenge a referee decision using video replay. It would provide a natural mechanism of checks and balances to limit potential refereeing biases.”
Beyond the specific issue of cross national matches, this study reveals how much the referee can influence the outcome of a game in rugby. According to Dr Lionel Page, “These results should prompt Rugby Federations to work further to limit the amount of referee subjective decisions in matches. Rugby is characterised by the necessity for referees to make a large number of subjective decisions in ambiguous decision. This study shows that this subjectivity may play a disproportionate role in the final match result. One of the ways forward could be to use technological innovations for some categories of decisions like offsides and forward passes.”
