Bias in the system was the first thing I ever looked at for one of my blogs. What kicked me off was actually Wigan fans suggesting that Wigan were on the rough end of systematic bias against them. Although I'm a very passionate Wigan fan, I felt the need to take an objective look and see if the feelings some fans had were merited.
Funny then that now, almost four years later, I'm looking into whether there's any bias from a starting point at the exact other end of things.
Listeners to SLP will know I'm fairly fed up with the notion popularised by many fans of an RFL bias towards the so called 'Big clubs' when it comes to matters of discipline. Largely in recent times that's focussed on Wigan - be it Sean O'Loughlin, Taulima Tautai or Josh Charnley, Wigan's recent trips to Red Hall of a weekday evening have been talked about plenty.
Again, I've tried to conduct an objective review, to see if these views of 'Big club bias' and 'Wigan running the RFL' are merited.
The table below shows a comprehensive break down of every charge made against a Super League player from the start of 2010 up to the weekend of Round 22 2016*. I'll go over some of the headline figures below, the table might not show up great on the blog so head over to our Facebook page for a larger version. I start in 2010 as that is when the current version of the on field sentencing guidelines - or something very much like it - came in.
(*when I say every charge, I mean in Super League or Challenge Cup games, but unfortunately excluding the 2015 Super 8s as they don't show in the search filters on RFL website at time of writing, and missing any other errors or omissions from the records)
So, is there a big club bias? Well first I need to understand who are the 'Big' clubs.
Obviously people use this term to mean Wigan and Leeds. They are the best attended and the most successful clubs in the 2010-2016 time period I'm looking at. St Helens have been very successful throughout the Super League era and are pretty well attended too - although I don't see 'big club bias' attached to their name too much, lets assume they're a big club. Hull FC and Warrington are the only other current Super League sides to win major finals in the Super League era and to regularly draw five-figure gates, so lets say they're big clubs too.
Huddersfield have a fairly recent League Leaders Shield and been runners up in the Cup in recent memory, but then crowds aren't great and they're in the Qualifiers this year, so let's assume medium size for them. Catalan have had a Cup final appearance and get reasonable gates so we'll lump them in there as well. Castleford and Hull KR on similar criteria might just be medium sized too - although both have missed some of the Super League years, just like the other two in this group. Bradford can also fit in here - they can't beat part-timers now but they were massive once upon a time, not so long ago.
That leaves London, Salford, Wakefield and Widnes as the small clubs - because to have big clubs you must have small ones, otherwise they'd all be normal sized! But seriously, by most metrics they must be what people mean in the big/small club divide. Oh, and League 1 Crusaders, though with so few charges from their Super League run (something ain't right in the RFL website data there) they're barely relevant to this review, so I won't mention them again.
So:
BIG - Hull FC, Leeds, St Helens, Warrington, Wigan
MEDIUM - Bradford, Castleford, Catalan, Huddersfield, Hull KR
SMALL - London, Salford, Wakefield, Widnes
The clubs with the most charges in the period are:
1. Catalan (Medium) - 52
2. Hull KR (Medium) - 40
3. Leeds (Big) - 38
The clubs with the fewest, that have played in all 7 seasons (i.e. not Bradford, Widnes or London), are:
1. St Helens (Big) - 22
2= Wakefield (Small) - 29
2= Huddersfield (Medium) - 29
The overall 'Guilty' verdict average across all 438 charges is 93%.
Clubs with above 93% of guilty charges:
Castleford (Medium) - 97%, Catalan (Medium) - 94%, Huddersfield (Medium) - 97%, Leeds (Big) - 95%, Salford (Small) - 95%, St Helens (Big) 95%, Widnes (Small) - 95%, Wigan (Big) - 94%
Clubs with below 93% of guilty charges:
Bradford (Medium) - 89%, Hull FC (Big) - 90%, Hull KR (Medium) - 90%, London (Small) - 86%, Wakefield (Small) - 91%
Warrington (Big) have 93%
Across all 409 guilty verdicts, 4% of bans are below the normal grade range, 75% are at the bottom of the normal range, 4% in the middle of the range somewhere and 17% are at the top of the normal grade range or above. (normal ban ranges are: Grade A is 0-1 games, B is 1-2, C is 2-3, D is 3-5, E is 4-8, F is 8+)
Warrington (Big) have seen the most bans below the normal range - 11% (Wigan are actually the only 'Big' club with less than 4% - meaning they're less likely than average to get a cushy lower ban handed to them).
Castleford (Medium), London (Small) and Widnes (Small) have had no bans below the normal range (Another 'small' club Wakefield do have 6% bans below the normal range - the only 'small' club to be above 4%, so more cushy lower bans than average).
Wigan (Big) and Catalan (Medium) both have 65% of bans at the bottom end of the normal range, the joint lowest figure - meaning they get fewer lenient bans than are given out to any of the small clubs.
Hull FC (Big), St Helens (Big) and Widnes (Small) all get the lowest normal ban most - 86% of the time.
Castleford (Medium) get the maximum normal ban most - 28% of the time - followed by Wigan (Big) 26% and Catalan (Medium) 24%.
Widnes (Small) get the maximum ban the least - 5% of the time - followed by Huddersfield (Medium) and Hull FC (Big) on 7%.
It does appear that on average the five 'Big' clubs get more charges downgraded, although it's 'Small' Salford who've had the most charges downgraded by the Tribunal. It does also appears that the 'Big' clubs get more punishments below the normal ban range, although this is skewed somewhat by 'Big' Warrington having three of 17 such cases. With such cases, though, we're talking small volumes.
With the larger volume 'bottom of normal range or below' and 'top of normal range or above' categories, the 'Big' clubs are just about more likely on average to get more of the softer punishments, but they're also quite a bit more likely to get more of the tougher punishments than 'Small' clubs too. Trust me, this does make sense when you notice Wigan are the only one of the 'Big' clubs to have had a mid-range ban handed to them, when smaller clubs like Widnes and London had a few of those.
What of appeals? Well there haven't been loads, so there's no firm conclusions to take away, but as a group the 'Big' clubs are more likely to make an appeal and more likely then to see success. I probably put this down more to making sure they have a better handle on the process rather than the process being biased towards them.
I would explain that success doesn't mean a guilty decision was overturned - in all but one case the success was only partial, in that there was a reduced ban but not a complete overturning of the decision. For the sake of colour, I'll also add that three of Wigan's six appeals have been made this season, and both partial successes were this year too - Flower and Tautai had bans reduced on appeal. I can't say there's a 'big club bias' from appeals though. The numbers are fairly low and the teams with the best success rates (Bradford, Hull FC, London and Warrington) come from all across the club size scale.
In conclusion, I'm not convinced from looking into charges over this lengthy period that there is any evidence of a 'Big' club bias. The spread of guilty charges, lenient punishments, lengthy bans and successful appeals cuts across all clubs.
'Small' clubs are slightly less likely to get a guilty charge than larger sized clubs. 'Big' clubs are slightly more likely to get a lenient punishment at the tribunal, although it's 'Medium' clubs that fare worse than 'Small' clubs in this regard. 'Medium' clubs will also get more top-end bans, with 'Big' clubs also more likely to see lengthy bans than the 'Small' ones. 'Big' clubs do have more success when appealing decisions.
There is one firm conclusion I can make from the data though - the disciplinary process errs on the side of low grades and lenient punishments. That will be the subject of my next blog post.
As always, thanks for reading and I hope this has been informative. And don't forget to listen to the show every week and tell your friends about SLP.
Mark
SLP
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