Home Comforts: the Role of Hormones, Territoriality and Perceptions on the Home Advantage in Football

Since the seminal work of Schwartz and Barsky (1977) detailing the notion of a home advantage, whereby teams perform consistently better at home opposed to away, there has been a plethora of research dedicated to studying this phenomenon. Many explanations for the home advantage have been proposed, including crowd support, venue familiarity, travel, rules, referee bias, and more recently, the territorial and behavioural responses elicited by a home venue. Neave and Wolfson (2003) reported that testosterone levels in male football players increased significantly at home compared to away, with defenders? levels higher than midfielders and forwards. Ice hockey players? pre-game cortisol levels have also been shown to be significantly higher at home (Carré, Muir, Belanger & Putnam, 2006). This thesis has attempted to provide a clearer understanding of the home advantage in football through both hormonal and perceptual perspectives.