By Robbie Butler

In Law 11 of Association Football’s Laws of the Game the offside rule is delineated. Section11.1 (Offside Position) states:
     A player is in an offside position if:

• any part of the head, body or feet is in the opponents’ half (excluding the halfway line) and
• any part of the head, body or feet is nearer to the opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent.

    The hands and arms of all players, including the goalkeepers, are not considered. For the purposes of determining        offside, the upper boundary of the arm is in line with the bottom of the armpit.
     A player is not in an offside position if level with the:

• second-last opponent or
• last two opponents.

 
This formal rule has been altered many times over the years. Back in 1863, football had a similar offside rule to rugby. Players were deemed offside if they were ahead of the ball, with a goal kick the only exception.
 
In 1866, the rules that we are familiar with today appeared. The big difference being that a player was offside “unless there are at least three of his opponents between him and their own goal”. As time passed, this changed to two, and has remained at two since (the goalkeeper is often forgotten about today as they are almost always between the attacker and the goal).
 
As the years rolled by other changes were made to alter the rule, many of which were to encourage attacking play and goals.
 
By 1990 FIFA and others wished to make further changes. During the World Cup in Italy the International Football Association Board met at the Hilton Cavalieri Hotel in Rome on the 28th of June to discuss changes to equipment and the offside rule. The minutes of the meeting can be found here and include the signature of one J. S. Blatter.
 
A crucial rule change was proposed and accepted at the meeting. The change was subtle and added just two words. Law XI – Off-side – (2) changed from:

   A player shall only be declared off-side and penalised for being in an off-side position, if, at the moment the ball             touches, or is played by one of the team, he is, in the opinion of the referee (a) interfering with play or with an               opponent, or (b) seeking to gain an advantage by being in that position.
 
                                                                                        to
 
   A player shall only be declared off-side and penalised for being in an off-side position, if, at the moment the ball             touches, or is played by one of the team, he is, in the opinion of the referee (a) seeking to interfere with play or with       an opponent, or (b) seeking to gain an advantage by being in that position.
 
The change is so subtle it is hardly noticeable. It is the addition of the two words “seeking to” just after “(a)”. This change was crucial.
 
Just over two weeks earlier, the Republic of Ireland had debuted at the World Cup and played rivals England in Cagliari. The game ended 1-1 thanks to a Kevin Sheedy equaliser for the Republic of Ireland after 73 minutes. The goal is one of the most famous in Irish football history and one of the most important.
 
It should not have stood under the offside rules at the time. The late Alan McLoughlin – who himself would become a national hero in November 1993 with a goal of at least equal importance – was stood in an offside position. The picture below demonstrates just how far offside McLoughlin was.

Following the 28th of June meeting, the rule was changed for the 1990/91 season so the players like McLoughlin would now be considered on-side as they were not “seeking to interfere” with play. Had VAR existed in 1990, arguably Ireland’s most famous goal would have been ruled out.
 
From 1990 to the introduction of VAR in the late 2010s, players were deemed to be onside if they were “level” with the second-last defender. The interpretation of ‘level’ was subjective, but most officials judge this to be, anecdotally at least, if some part of the attacker was inline with the second-last defender.
 
In May 2005 in Zurich FIFA sought to clear this up by stating that a player is offside if “any part of his head, body or feet is nearer to his opponents’ goal line than both the ball and second last defender. The arms are not included”. Because the technology did not exist to examine in-game decisions, officials used their judgement to make these calls. They got many correct and some incorrect.
 
With the introduction of VAR and now automated offside, last night we got this graphic.

 It is a digital representation of Manchester United’s Victor Lindelof (foreground) and Galatasaray’s Mauro Icardi (background). Icardi had just scored but was ruled offside. VAR presented this as the check. It seems either Icardi’s shoulder or ear are not “level”.
 
Is this gaining an advantage? A shoulder or ear millimetres ahead of the second-last defender more than 30 yards from goal. Not for me. But those making and implementing the rules seem to think so. As do many others.

​When the technology is used like this, it reverses all the rule changes in the decades before that were implemented to increase the number of goals.  
 
I wonder how many goals – many of the most famous of all time – would have been ruled out because of VAR? How many outcomes would be different? How many trophies won or lost?

By Robbie Butler

Our research was quoted referenced in the British newspaper The Guardian this week. The piece - Sport’s age of excess: tournaments get bigger, but will they get better? - was written by chief sports reporter Sean Ingle and explores the growth of mega-sports events in recent years.

The full piece - which can be read here for free - makes reference to a recent Formula One demand study we had published in Managing Sport and Leisure. The paper can be found here.

By David Butler

IHRB recently published their first ever annual report . This is the first report since the IHRB was established in 2018. At this time they assumed the role of the Racing Regulatory Body in Ireland. There are some interesting data in the report.

One statistic that caught my eye was the proportion of non-runners at racetracks, and the reasons for this. ‘Change in Going' is the primary cause – as expected – but this is trending upward from 2016. This could be due to general horse welfare considerations, but I wonder is this also a function of a more erratic climate. Food for thought. Will the increasing climate extremes (downfalls of rain in the Summer months etc.) impact the level of withdrawn horses?  Perhaps more generally, how will climate change impact the racing conditions? At a stretch, will climate uncertainty and the variable racing conditions it brings impact the hammer price?

By Robbie Butler

There is an ongoing battle in Great Britain now between betting companies, the racing industry and government. It is a result of a Gambling White Paper published by the UK Government in April 2023 that sets out proposals for affordability checks on gamblers. Operationalised, a regulator will have the ability to use data to instigate “background checks” on punters betting on sports outcomes.

Those in favour of these checks argue that they are required in a digital age where gambling on a smartphone or tablet device is possible 24 hours a day, and the incidence of problem gambling is on the rise. A recent study in Ireland by the ESRI finds that 1 in 30 adults in Ireland suffer from problem gambling.

Those opposed to the plans – especially plans to introduce blanket affordability checks on all punters – argue this is another example of government overreach into private, individual matters. Calls for blanket checks have been largely met with opposition by those in the betting and racing circles, who argue these checks will have a detrimental impact on both industries. A petition is currently available online to convince the government not to proceed with these plans.

This battle, between the racing industry and government, is nothing new. 300 years ago, Britain faced a similar crisis. The Financial Revolution – circa 1700 – led to the widespread printing of money, and an increase in both the money supply and velocity of money in the economy. This was greatly assisted by the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694.

At the same time horse racing was starting to flourish under the reign of Queen Anne. English people turned to gambling in large numbers, primarily for leisure, especially as greater amounts of money began to flow to lower socio-economic groups for the first time.

By the early decades of the 1700s, gambling was widespread across England. The authorities became concerned and sought to change the direction of society. One such way to reduce the incidence of betting among the public was to curtail the number of horse races, by increasing transaction costs.

In 1740 Parliament passed an Act that sought “to restrain and prevent the excessive Increase of Horse Races”. The terms of the Act included a clause that stated:
“No person was allowed to enter, start, or run any race horse, mare or gelding for any race, unless the animal so entered was the bona fide property of the person by whom it was entered. No person can enter more than one horse in any race. No Plate can be run for under the value of £50. Any infringement of this stipulation was liable to a penalty of £200; 5-year-old horses to carry 10st each; 6-year-olds to carry 11st; 7-year-olds to carry 12st. Owners of horses carrying less weight than that stipulated to forfeit £200.

The Act proved to be highly ineffective, and racing continued to flourish. The Jockey Club was established in 1750. Despite not working, the legislation remained in place until 1840 when it was repealed by Parliament.

By Robbie Butler

Over the weekend I watched two live domestic (Irish) football games on television. On Friday night Waterford played Cork City in the 2023 promotion-relegation playoff, while on Sunday evening St Pats and Bohemian met in the 2023 FAI Cup Final. Both were highly enjoyable.

It was during the Friday night game that one of the younger residents in our house said, “I prefer watching this game. There is no VAR!” I couldn’t have agreed more. And how refreshing I thought. A preference for live League of Ireland football over the English Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, etc. It made me think "Are we travelling full circle?"

It is almost 60 years since Match of the Day was broadcast for the first time. On the 22nd of August 1964, highlights of a game between Liverpool and Arsenal were screened by the BBC. The images were broadcast not only throughout the UK, but also into Ireland.

The domestic league here, which many would agree was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s began to witness a notable decrease in attendance demand. By the 1980s, the League of Ireland was at breaking point and is a story of crisis after crisis, from both the perspective of the clubs and those running the game. Written in the mid-2000s Who Stole Our Game provides a wonderful description of this.

Despite expanding economic growth here during the 1990s and 2000s, the domestic game continued to struggle financially and several clubs either ceased trading or had to reform under new names and ownership structures. All the while the Premier League and Champions League went from strength to strength. Technology – the live broadcasting of matches – had played a major role in, what seemed to be, the terminal decline of the League of Ireland.

Is this now changing?

Since the introduction of VAR, attendances in the League have begun to rise. The excellent Extratime.com reports that during the 2022 season, attendance demand was up 56% on 2017 figures. This season, official league data reported a 23% increase in attendance demand on the 2022 season. Ticket sales are on the up.

This increase in demand was amplified at the weekend when the FAI Cup Final – broadcast live on free-to-air television – sold out the Aviva Stadium. It was the first time this game had resulted in a sell-out of the Aviva Stadium, with nearly 44,000 fans in attendance. It was also a record attendance for the final and only the second time ever the game attracted more than 40,000 fans – the last time being way back in 1945.

One of the best things about the game was that it was a VAR-free zone. No checking of penalties, or goals or foul play. Just trust in the referee. Goals could be celebrated. Late tackles were not dwelt on for minutes after being made, and then requiring the use of off field monitors, but dealt with by the match officials.

At the same time, Chelsea and Man City were locked in battle in the Premier League. The game ended 4-4. At one point, the VAR was checking to see if it should disallow an Earling Haaland goal as the ball caught up with his raised elbow as he slid over the goal line. He made no attempt to use his hand to manipulate the ball. Thankfully for Man City fans, Haaland had the presence of mind to raise his arm so that the ball missed it as it crossed the line. Had he not, no doubt VAR would have ruled it a technical handball and disallowed the goal. One had to see it to believe it.

Technology, in the form of broadcasting, killed off the domestic game in Ireland as it was known from the late 1960s. I believe technology, this time in the form of VAR, could do the same to leagues that use it, as it removes so much enjoyment from watching the game. How apt it would be if technological change in England leads to the resurgence of the League of Ireland. We would have travelled full circle.

The domestic league has a chance to resist VAR and create a competitive advantage that other leagues have inexplicably given up. I hope Irish football remains a VAR-free zone.

By David Butler

The last few years have seen an increase in the number of fly on the wall documentaries at football clubs.  The All or Nothing ‘docuseries’ broadcast on Amazon Prime is one of the most prominent examples. Amazon have followed teams at a national and club level, going inside the dressing rooms of Brazil, Manchester City, Tottenham, Arsenal  and Juventus. The first versions of the series were for NFL franchises.

On occasion, we get interesting insights into the player selection and transfer process. Here is one.

Jose Mourinho is considering a player report for Steven Bergwijn before his potential transfer from PSV to Tottenham in the 2019-20 season. While there is clearly more in the report, we can see the type of basic information a manager is given prior to a transfer. The picture is grainy but it shows a file in Mourinho’s hand where he has information on Bergwijn’s goals, assists, honours, his number of seasons experienced in football (Top 5, CL, EPL and ‘other leagues’), his position on the pitch, his starts and his minutes. It is this type of data that forms our understanding of how much players are paid and how much they are transferred for. 

Almost all of these stats are freely available online and there is no evidence of any advanced analytics in Mourinho’s report (of course we see just one page).  The most interesting statistic – that is not readily available at the click of a button – is how many minutes a player is ‘available for’. This number must control for injuries and other reasons for absence. From a managerial perspective, this is likely important.

By Robbie Butler

“The game is gone”. This is a statement I have heard quite a few times in recent days. It is made in reference to video assistant referee (VAR) decisions which to many, me included, are ruining the game of football.

To understand why, I offer some institutional explanations for the problems of VAR and explain what I believe – admittedly using anecdotal evidence only – is undercutting the very fabric of the game.

Football has its origins in the Victorian schools of England in the middle of the nineteenth century. People would come together, distinguished by different coloured caps (e.g., red caps vs blue caps) and kick a ball around a field. Various rules were employed, depending on the location of the school, and collectively these games became known as "Invasion sports". The term was used as the objective of both teams was to invade the territory of the opposition to score points, while also attempting to keep the opposing team from scoring in their end.

As differences began to emerge in how formal rules were applied, different codes emerged. For example, rugby football permitted the use of one’s hands whereas association football did not.

It was at this time the first widely used codified set of rules for association football ­– The Sheffield Rules – were written and presented at the Adelphi Hotel in the city on the 28th October 1858.

Controversy also emerged around offside rules. To this day, a player is considered offside in rugby if he or she is ahead of the ball. Football was the same in the mid-1800s. Gradually the rules started to change, whereby a player could be ahead of the ball if a certain number of defenders were between that player and the goal, when the ball was kicked.

As the formal rule was changed, informal institutions began to emerge. This included customs, norms of behaviour and habits. Whilst not directly captured by the formal institutional constraints of the game, they are equally important as they go to the very core of what it means to play football. Today they include behaviours such as kicking a ball from play for an injured opponent, returning the ball to the opposition when they have conceded possession to assist an injured opponent or shaking hands at the end of the game.

The football we watch on our televisions today are based on a set of institutional constraints – both formal and informal laws – that have their origins in Victorian Britain. They were not written with the technological change that has occurred since in mind. One of the original rules states that: “A ball in touch is dead.”

At no point did the rule makers back in 1858 state that this would include the full circumference of the ball. How could they have possibly imagined that by the 2020s technology would exist that allows a VAR to communicate with the on-field referee, freeze-frame a moment of play and drop an imaginary line from the edge of the spherical ball to test whether the entirety of the ball had crossed the entirety of the white-line marking the parameters of the pitch. Japan versus Spain, and more recently, Newcastle versus Arsenal come to mind.

The rules were not written for this sort of testing. It is almost scientific. Football is not science. It is emotions, habits, customs, judgements, normative behaviours, spontaneous, and many other things. It should not be scientific. The economic definition might be that it is a series of decisions, made under constrained optimisation, where agents seek to maximise both individual outcomes and outcomes for the group.

The application of VAR has attempted to put the parameters of science onto an institutional structure that is not fit for purpose. It has resulted in an undercutting of referee authority and a sequence of events that have made referees appear largely incompetent.

The irony in all this of course is that VAR was introduced to do the opposite. It sought to help referees and remove controversy. What has gone wrong?

It appears to me that referees are no longer officiating the game how they used to. Instead of calling decisions as they see them, they are instead allowing play to continue, and deferring to VAR. This is an unintended consequence of VAR and is probably observed best by consideration of type 1 and type 2 errors in the game today.

A type 1 error is a false-positive. This error occurs if an investigator (referee) rejects a null hypothesis that is true. A type 2 error (false-negative) occurs if the investigator (referee) fails to reject a null hypothesis that is actually false.

In football a Type 1 error would be the awarding of a penalty by a referee for a foul that isn’t deemed so by VAR. The referee would then have to consult the monitor and decide it was not a penalty and proceed in an appropriate way. From my viewing of the game, this almost never happens. An occasion when you may see it is when a red card is rescinded.

A type 2 error is observed almost all the time. The referee fails to award a penalty, red card, etc. and then subsequently halts the game to be told otherwise by VAR. We see this in almost every game now. It happened in the Champions League last night when Marcus Rashford was sent off several minutes after a tackle.

So why are almost all the errors Type 2? Assuming VAR has not altered the behaviour of referees, one could reasonably expect a random distribution of type 1 and type 2 errors. Referees see some fouls which are not and miss others which are.

It appears to me that referees are allowing the game to continue, knowing that VAR can correct type 2 errors which may lead to less embarrassment than the correction of type 1 errors. For example, it may be easier to say “I didn’t see that as my view was obscured” rather than say “I thought I saw that but actually I was wrong”. If this is a situation that is occurring, two or more games are effectively running concurrently. The game you are watching and the game that may happen once VAR intervenes.

And there is a further problem now. The formal requirement of VAR means that it will only overrule a decision that is clearly wrong. This is fine if the officials are working under pre-VAR conditions. But if their behaviour has changed due to VAR, then there is a problem. The referee is deferring to VAR even though they believe something to be a foul, card, etc. and VAR must agree with the official unless there is a clear error. The cycle becomes reinforcing and can result in decisions that are incorrect not being overturned.

​Former Spurs player Jamie O’Hara said yesterday (on Marcus Rashford’s tackle) ““The game is gone. VAR is ruining football.” The day before, when asked about the performance of the VAR in the Tottenham versus Chelsea game he replied: “It wasn’t the worst; it got most things right”. The statement makes sense and is truly extraordinary, nonetheless. “Most”. Referees always got “most” things right. 

By David Butler

This time last year I wrote about how Waterford were attempting to break their League of Ireland playoff curse by overcoming UCD. They did not.

This season, they have yet another chance. Waterford have now reached the playoff final on eight separate occasions previously and have yet to be successful as either the Premier Division or First Division team. This pain began for the Blues in the first League of Ireland playoffs back in the 1992/93 season when they were beaten by Monaghan.

Next Friday night they meet Cork in a Munster Derby playoff and, once again, Waterford can potentially overcome the pain of losing these season defining matches. As is the case with many playoff final matches in football, these are financially very important as they determine which league tier a club will participate in for the next season. 
​
It’s 50/50 when it comes to which Division the winner (who gains promotion) comes from. Since the playoffs were introduced in Ireland for the 1992/93 season, the winner has come from the First Division and the Premier Division both 14 times. There were 3 seasons with no playoff and the format has changed various times along the way.

By Robbie Butler

One of the long running competition design issues in world rugby has been the problem of competitive balance. The 2023 Rugby World Cup put this into full focus. With the competition set to increase to 24 countries in 2027 one has to wonder if this will add to the tournament. 

Outcome uncertainty in the pool stages was very low. Here are some observations:

• Just 8 of the 40 pool games had a score (7 points) or less between the teams at full time. 
• 25 (62.5%) pool games had a winning margin of 20 points or more. 
• 10 pool games (25%) had a winning margin of more than 50 points. 
• 5 pool games ended with one team failing to score. 
• The average winning margin across all 40 pool games was almost 32 points.

The pool stage exceptions were probably Georgia versus Portugal which ended in a draw, Portugal's one point win over Fiji, England's win over Samoa and Ireland's 5 point win over South Africa.

The knock-out stages proved to be very different and were incredibly exciting and close in most game. The average winning margin was just over 8 points. This is largely driven by New Zealand's 38 point win over Argentina in the quarter finals.

If this is removed, the average winning margin from the remaining 7 games is just 4 points. Three of the games ended in the smallest possible winning margin - one point - all of which included South Africa. 

Adding more teams is unlikely to improve the issues in the pool stages. Maybe World Rugby could take a leaf out of the Cricket World Cup which is also being held at the moment.

​The number of teams at the tournament has actually declined since 2007. 16 became 14 which has become 10. This will increase to 14 again in 2027 but it demonstrates that reducing the number of teams competing is an option worth exploring.