HOME COMFORTS
But does playing on your own ground actually help?
THIS afternoon, hurling is coming home. At least as far as Waterford supporters and Walsh Park is concerned. The city venue is officially back open for its first Allianz Hurling League game since redevelopment work over the past 18 months or so forced the county senior team to relocate. While Fraher Field in Dungarvan filled in for League matches against Antrim and Dublin last year, Davy Fitzgerald’s Munster Championship ambitions weren’t helped by the fact that Waterford had to play their two ‘home’ games in the province’s round robin in Thurles.
So how much is having Walsh Park back available going to be worth to the Déise this year?
With an upgrade that has transformed the venue, there is no excuse for the crowds not to return in big numbers to support this team – after deserting them in swathes during last year’s Championship for those two ‘home’ games at Semple Stadium, On those occasions, they were totally outnumbered by Limerick and Clare supporters and suffered defeat both times.
But how much is a home crowd or home advantage worth?
The LGFA’s new advertising campaign is built around the idea of a crowd making such a difference to players on match day.
Home advantage is just that – an advantage. Partisan support, extra pressure on the referee – there are a myriad of studies across the codes as to why a venue tends to feed in to the win percentage of any team.
A cursory glance at last year’s League would suggest it holds true. Just take Division 1 and the plum fixture of round one. That took place on the first Saturday night in February when Cork beat three-ina-row All-Ireland champions Limerick by a point at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in front of just under 20,000 people. How much was the home crowd worth. A single point?
Even in the simple, broadest sense, it was hard to avoid how a boisterous, big home support lent itself to a thrilling finale.
But a study of the 2023 Division 1 group stage as a whole – the six-team Group A and Group B – offers an interesting counterpoint.
The results show that home advantage was no advantage at all. In fact, the win percentage overall favoured the visiting team.
Group A was a case in point, a group which featured Cork, Limerick, Galway, Clare, Wexford and Westmeath – and finished up in that order.
There were three consecutive rounds – rounds two, three, and four – which went against the head. When the majority of home teams lost.
Of the 15 games played, there were only six home wins, eight away wins and one draw.
In Group B – which finished up in order of Tipperary, Kilkenny, Waterford, Dublin, Antrim and Laois – there were seven home wins, seven away wins and one draw. About as even a split as you can get.
Once again, home advantage was no advantage at all.
In five rounds across two different groups, only in round four of Group B was there a clean sweep of three home wins.
So what about the 2023 roundrobin provincial championships?
The Leinster round-robin is in keeping with most natural assumptions. With eight home wins compared to four away wins – there were three draws – it dovetails with the perception that home advantage should tilt the odds significantly.
Munster though, is not so straightforward. It’s basically 50-50. Of the 10 games, there were four home wins, four away wins and two draws.
Now perhaps that is slanted slightly by Waterford having to play their home games across the border in Tipperary but still, it’s interesting how effective teams are in getting results on the road.
Maybe that has something to do with the week-on-week nature of the round robin which was only first introduced in 2018 but which has meant teams are playing far more championship games – home and away – at far more regular intervals. So there is little mystique to Waterford say heading to Thurles or the Gaelic Grounds – far from it.
When Waterford thumped Tipperary in the 2021 All-Ireland quarter-final by 4-28 to 2-27, there was even a sense that the wider environs of Semple suited the visitors more than a tight Walsh Park – significantly, the pitch dimensions of the latter have been widened by four metres in the upgrade.
Here is manager Davy Fitzgerald, talking pre-Christmas about the benefit of having Walsh Park back as a venue for the Munster round-robin.
‘We have two home games, we have Cork and Tipp. To be able to play in your home ground is a plus. Like, I would just encourage the Waterford supporters to come out and support us. Maybe they’ll say, “Ah, sure we’ve been supporting them for a long time and they’ve got no place”. But do you know what? You always have to have hope and I think if the glass is half full rather than half empty it’s better off. I’m hoping that we’ll get every Waterford person that we can into Walsh Park.’
This afternoon Waterford take on a high-flying Clare team who took the scalp of Cork in round one. After winning on the road themselves against Offaly, a home win would set Fitzgerald’s team up nicely for the campaign and start the process of turning the new venue into one that other teams don’t fancy visiting.
Studies show how a venue feeds into a team’s win percentage