Graham Spiers' Podcast
I appeared on Graham Spiers’ Press Box podcast this past week to discuss “Do Scottish refs favour Rangers”. If podcasts had open goals…………whits the goaly daen’?
Anyway, I was given the space to run through at a very high level some results from various pieces of analysis by myself and others, which, when taken together, point to evidence of the potential pattern of assistance for one club. Since the pod, Graham has given a supporter of The Rangers space to put up what has been styled a “rebuttal” and then free reign to run amok in the comments.
The “rebuttal” article is free to air while the pod remains behind a paywall. I have asked Graham twice now to either put both free-to-air or both behind a paywall. He is “thinking about it”—a weighty decision balancing the rights of the people who have already paid versus balance and fairness. Graham is just the man for such a moral conundrum!
Why have I not responded, and why am I not engaging in the debate raging over on the Patreon? I will cover that in a moment, but first, a comment on the podcast.
I do have a regret. On it, I allowed myself to get drawn into a debate on “why” all this was happening. Unlike the investigative data, I wasn’t particularly prepped for that, and I felt it diluted the message somewhat.
It allowed the likes of Matthew Lindsay to deploy lazy tropes and to try to “Old Firm” the debate. This is about the Scottish Football Association, NOT The Rangers, although it is touching some of their fans feel the need to defend the governing body so vociferously. I also made at least one mistake – for example, Willie Collum went six months without refereeing The Rangers, not 18, as I stated. I'm happy to correct that, and that’s all on me. Mind you, Lindsay claimed The Ranger's current jeopardy-free run was only home games, so we all make mistakes.
For me, the far more serious aspect of this is the analysis. Both Graham and the respondent he published fall into the same trap. This was well expressed by my dear friend @jucojames earlier in the week. He pointed out that the “kerfuffle” (it isn’t a debate): “is a good case study on the importance of distinguishing between "stats/data" and having a robust analytical framework grounded within a good faith attempt at objectivity.”
My chronically balanced trans-Atlantic buddy nailed it.
I have tried to explain the method and rationale, be consistent with timeframes and scope, and explain the decision made. I will document this.
All of those things are up for good faith debate, and I deserve to be challenged on them. There will be imperfections– as James and I often nerdily joke, “all models are crap; some are just slightly more useful than others”. When a bad faith actor responds with lots of unstructured “stats/data”, shifting scope, timelines and selectively segmenting that isn’t an analytical framework, it’s just throwing numbers at a wall and hoping some land.
This is about holding power (in this case, the SFA) to account. It isn’t about The Rangers. All football fans in Scotland should be interested in whether there are issues with officiating as it probably impacts their team, too.
I am a Celtic fan, and I am biased as regards how I see on-field decisions.
I will commit to being transparent about the data used, the scope, the timeframes, the safeguards, the assumptions, the method, the rationale and the reasoning behind the conclusions. Any subsequent debate has to be in good faith AND utilise good practise.
My objective in all of this is to establish whether there is a problem with Scottish refereeing. I will publish all this in a time and place of my choosing.
Also, I will stick to the data analysis in the future and let the sociologists and anthropologists get into the whys and wherefores of unpacking any potential causes of a pattern of assistance.