Every year Lancaster and York university compete in every sport you can think of (and some you can't) in an event called Roses. They take turns to host it. And it is true, that generally the hosting side usually win.

I believe that the stated intention of the away goal rule is to encourage attacking football, by making the away side more eager to attack, rather than just trying to defend for 90 minutes. Of course, the converse is also true in that it makes the home team less eager to attack openly, for fear of conceding a goal, but I don't think anyone ever thought of that.

The situation with the Scottish premier division is, of course, mind bogglingly stupid. The reason for this is that the entirety of Scottish football is mind boggingly stupid. There are the two top teams, Rangers and Celtic, that get lots of money from selling tickets to sectarianists, which lets them buy slightly crap foreign players who want to play in a league where the opposition will make them look good. Take out those two clubs and form a team with the best players of the entire rest of the league and they'd have ttrouble beating a Peruvian llama herders over-40 XI. You have to have sympathy with the guy who organises their league, because there's no way it could ever possibly not be a joke. They probably got bored one day and decided to just make up some totally whacked out scheme to see if anyone would notice.

The scheme from UEFA that you link to is, indeed, particularly crackpot. For one thing, I thought that the old system of being allowed no more than n foreign players was got rid of due to it being horribly illegal. Secondly, if the teams are required to have n players out of their youth academy in their squad at any one time, all that will happen is that the big clubs will sign up just about everyone from the age of 12 onwards to their academies, and the little clubs will get screwed even worse than they do already. And thirdly, can we say "Bosman ruling"? Yes, I thought we could. Players leave clubs. There's absolutely nothing the clubs can do to prevent this. Are they meant to come out with four first-team quality players every season or something? Truly barmy.

And you won't be remotely surprised to hear that footba isn't the only sport that has these problems. I tend to follow formula 1 grand prix racing thing as well, and some of the rules there are truly mind blowing in their staggering incomprehensibility. Like, there was a change to the rules for this season that bans changing tires at pit stops. I'm stil not entirely sure what the motivation behind this was. Possibly something to do with making more interesting tactics, or evelling the playing field, or something else like that. As far as I can see though, all it's actually managed to achieve is to make some drivers' races go horribly wrong when their tyres get shot to buggery. Truly bizarre.

I think Greg Dyke's assessment of student sporting activities is pretty accurate, but I would hope the same effect doesn't apply to professional footballers competing in international club competition ;)

All these football rules really are boggling - and that F1 pit stop ruling is just insane and unsafe imo..

'It is easy to see why the home team usually wins Roses; due to the large home numbers of support and the amount of alcohol consumed by the away team’ - Greg Dyke, Former Director General of the BBC and Chancellor of York University

And Clair, I'll confess that I've no first-hand experience of the Roses. I don't play any sports, and I've no interest in getting mind-bogglingly drunk, so my only experience is from listening to friends bemoaning/celebrating having won/lost the sailing/rugby/pool/frisbee.

A coin toss would only be marginally worse.

In other words, it recognises that it is both harder to defend and to attack when playing away.

And as Ganesh says, you've gotta pick something, and why not this. The rules are the same for each team, they don't depend on penalties (which are a highly arbitrary way of deciding a game, ruling out all sorts of elements of football, especially teamwork, in order to decide a game), and they work.

The extra time thing with each half being "home" or "away" is a bit silly, but that's just a tacked-on extra, the main body of the concept is ok IMO.

There are, essentialy, four elements to it:

home attack
home defense
away attack
away defense

Obviously, away attack is given extra benefit over home attack, because away goals count for extra. Similarly, home defense is more important than away defense. It's better to have a good, strong attack when you're away, and then a good strong defense when you're at home. That way you score away goals, but don't concede any.

I think that the logic is that the "default" way that a game is played is to have the home team be more offensive and the away side be more defensive. If that's the case then the away rule makes sense because it encourages the away side to press forwards more and the home side to be a little bit more cagey, resulting in a more evenly matched sort of game.

The problem is that some teams are happy tosit back and defend at home, and look for a 0-0 or a 1-0, and then play the tie in the away leg knowing that they only need a 1-1 or 1-2 result to win overall. Or even worse, when the first leg ends 1-1 and then the home team in the second leg sets out to look for a 0-0.

In that sort of case it benefits both the home team and defensive football, neither of which was the intent of the rule.

Personally, I say that in the case of a draw, there should be a panel of independant judges who decide which team was more entertaining to watch, and they win on a points decission.

Yes, the away goals rule provides an incentive to go out and score away from home; it also provides an incentive to sit back and defend at home, since goals scored by the *opposition* are worth more in that leg.

I still don't see why it's sane to encourage defence at home and attack away, particularly.

Which I suppose is my point; the rule is there for the benefit of the TV networks, who don't like extra time, because it disrupts their schedules, and to make the game more exciting and hence more appealing to advertisers. And I'm generally cynical about rules brought in for the benefit of the TV networks, even if they do make for a more exciting game to watch in the pub.