Video analysis of acute injuries and referee decisions during the 24th Men's Handball World Championship 2015 in Qatar.

Although handball is a contact sport with a high risk of acute match injuries, their mechanisms have not yet been investigated. We aimed to describe the mechanisms of acute match injuries in elite male handball and evaluate referee performance in injury situations. Based on injury surveillance from the 24th Men's Handball World Championship 2015 in Qatar, injury situations and the referee decisions were identified on video footage. A total of 55 injury situations and 37 referee decisions were included for analysis. The injury situations were analyzed individually by five handball experts, followed by a consensus meeting. An expert referee panel performed individual blinded evaluation of the referee decisions, followed by an online consensus meeting. Injuries were evenly distributed among attackers (n = 29) and defenders (n = 26). The most frequent injury cause was contact trauma due to a tackle (n = 27). At the time of injury, attackers were most frequently performing a jump shot (n = 9), while defenders were completing a tackle (n = 10). Defenders most commonly tackled the throwing arm (n = 7) or toward the head/face region (n = 6) of injured attackers, while attackers most frequently hit injured defenders with the knee during jump shots (n = 5). Agreement between the referees and the expert panel was weak (kappa: 0.22, 95% CI 0.07 to 0.36), with substantially more lenient rule interpretation by the referees. Our results suggest that stricter refereeing and rule amendments should be considered to prevent acute match injuries in elite handball, especially in relation to tackling episodes when an attacker is performing a jump shot.

Home Advantage and Referee Bias: A Comparative Analysis of League Level Differences.

Home advantage (HA) and referee bias are two important phenomena in football (soccer) and are frequently investigated by researchers. This study focused on analyzing HA and referee bias at different league levels. The study included 632 matches played in Turkey's top two leagues during the 2022-2023 season. Both leagues showed statistically significant game outcome differences between home and away teams regarding points, goals, shots, shots on target, passes, accurate passes, and ball possessions, indicating a HA. However, regarding referee bias, this study found that only Level 1 teams significantly differed in penalties and that this difference was not evident after analyzing for Bayes factors. Among Level 2 teams, as there was no statistical difference between home and away teams on any parameter indicating referee bias, and all Bayes factors indices were between 3.92-11.15, the null hypothesis was supported. Therefore, the results revealed a HA at both league levels, but a referee bias was not present in either league. This study emphasized that the HA phenomenon is clear and still evident in elite football and sub-elite leagues.

Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Euroleague Basketball.

The aim of this study was to understand how training and playing conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic affected the performance of Euroleague Basketball players. Using a non-participant observation analysis, the study compared the seasons before the lockdown (2018-2019 and 2019-2020; pre-pandemic) with the season after restart (2020-2021; pandemic). Paired t-tests and Wilcoxon tests were applied for variables with normal and non-normal distributions, respectively. The results revealed significant changes (p < 0.05) in several offensive and defensive performance-related variables during pandemic times (without attendance): free throw attempts, free throw percentage, turnovers, three-point attempt rate, fouls (small effect sizes, ESs), points, and possessions (trivial ES). The pre-pandemic HA (70%) significantly decreased after the lockdown, with games played with no crowd (∼51%; p = 0.018, large ES). The one-sample t-test showed that the HA after the COVID-19 interruption was not significantly greater than 50%, indicating that the HA did not endure during the pandemic condition. Although significant differences between home and away teams were found for most performance-related variables (excepting turnovers) in both pre-pandemic and pandemic conditions, variations of the relative HA were only significant for free throw attempts (large ES), points (medium ES), and turnovers (medium ES). The results of this study showed that performance variables were affected by the COVID-19 lockdown. Thus, these findings may help coaches, players, and referees to counteract unwanted competitive events and improve their overall performance, regardless of the contextual/situational circumstances encountered.