For some reason they never delivered the Independent to my newsagent last Sunday, so I had to get the Observer instead. Which gave me a three in thirteen chance that paid off handsomely. it was the week when they put the Observer Sports Monthly in with it.
You're right, of course. Actually, the odds are twelve in three hundred and sixty five and a quarter, unless I live to 2100 in which case they suddenly tumble to twelve in three hundred and sixty five and six twenty fifths. Or alternatively, given that it was the first Sunday in the month, they were one in one. It all depends how you define your terms. There are similar problems with the Goldilocks Principle.
Just look it up. I'm not going to spoonfeed you. What am I, your nurse? Oh all right, it's here. Now open wide. Yes, your mouth. Don't go thinking you're geting lucky with me.
Anyway, there was a very interesting article about home advantage. In most sports, the team playing at their own ground does better on average than the team that's visiting. We, the fans, like to imagine that it's all down to us, urging our team on and inspiring them to heroic deeds, while browbeating the enemy team into submission. That should have read the opposing team, not the enemy team. It was just a slip of the keyboard, signifying nothing.
It turns out, though, that home advantage declines significantly whenever a club moves to a new stadium. Arsenal are famous for this. After they moved into their new Emirates Stadium, their performance fell off for a few months. The same thing happened several years ago, when they played their European home games at Wembley for a season.
This suggests that it isn't us fans that make the difference, but the advantages that come from playing on a familiar ground. Players know how the ball will bounce in the boggy bit by the goal line. They know the wind will hold up a cross slightly differently at each end, and the sun will put wingers off on one side of the pitch, but not the other. Rugby players know exactly where you need to drop kick from. Cricket players know how the wicket will behave on a wet day in September, when it's had a lot of bowling that summer.
It's also to do with confidence, and territoriality. Even when tested an hour before the game, home players have more testosterone in their bloodstream than away players. The theory is that they're psyched up to defend their own territory. Women football teams average a much smaller home advantage, while national teams, ripped to the tits on patriotism and pride, enjoy a bigger home advantage even though they're playing in relatively unfamiliar stadiums.
Travel also appears to be a factor. The evidence for this is that teams from Scotland, Greece and Turkey do hugely better at home in the Champions League than they do away, because when they're at home the other team has to travel long distances to get to them, while for away games the opposite is true.
But it doesn't make as much difference as it once did. In the early days of the Football League, home teams would average 70% of points earned. Now it's nearer to 60%. Weirdly, the change occurred just after the war. The theory is that the home stadium didn't feel so much like home any more, plus the away players had learned there were more frightening things than a strange pitch.
There are blips in the data. Team sports have a bigger home advantage than individual ones, which is why the English never win Wimbledon. For some reason baseball has the lowest home advantage of all sports, and it's less for American sports in general. The suggestion is that that's because the testosterone bonus is wiped out by steroids and other drugs.
After the stats, the sex Olympics. An anonymous British athlete, let's just call him Linford, writes about the shagging at athletics tournaments. Athletics is a fuckfest, that's the only word for it, he begins, promisingly if inaccurately. Whenever someone tells me there's only one word for something, I can't help but hear it as a provocation. Shagathon. That's two. Frottalong. Bonkmelée. Porkaboloosa. Knobgymkhana. Actually I'm going to stop now, as that last one is conjuring up some rather inappropriate images.
It's all in the villages, apparently. The Olympic villages, which as it turns out are more like Olympic bath houses. The Commonwealth Games are even worse, which is why they're called 'The Friendly Games'. I'll never hear that in the same way again.
The Linford thing is just a tease, but I bet it's sprinters. And Javelin throwers. The marathon runners wouldn't have the energy, and let's face it, the shot putters aren't built to entice.
The hard part is, they all have to wait until after their event. Wouldn't that be annoying? You're trying to get an early night before the decathlon, and the relay teams are all finished, and out on the barbecue area having a spit roast. Galling or what?
Let's just hope the boyfriends and girlfriends never find out. As we've already established, you're on a hiding to nothing, playing away.