I was at the gym the other day, flicking through one of the sports tabloids, and then I came across the page on Indonesian football. And without really thinking about it, more by second nature than anything else, I started to study the Indonesia Super League table.

I’ve always had a thing with stats and numbers and a close analysis of stats like this can help identify certain probabilities that may be useful in football gambling strategies. But after a while it struck me that there was something strange. Something very strange indeed…

Okay here’s the background first.

Basically, everyone knows that there are three possible outcomes of a football fixture – home win, draw or away win.

And home wins are much more likely than away wins. There are a number of reasons why this is so – psychological; having the crowd behind you, whatever – but basically it’s simply referred to as “home advantage”.

But how big is “home advantage”?

Well this is when it gets interesting.

Because no matter what leagues you look at – Italian, English, Argentinean whatever - “home advantage” in football is pretty much the same in statistical terms.

And the magic distribution?

Well its 47% 28% 25%

What this simply means is that in the long run 47% of games in a league will end in home wins, 28% in draws and 25% in away wins.

Of course there is some margin of error – but the more games you look at the closer you will get to this distribution of results.

To see for yourself, you can look at the stats from some of the leagues here.

I ran through a few leagues myself.

In the 2006-2007 English Premiership, for example, there were 182 home wins, 98 draws, and 100 away wins. That’s a distribution of 48% home wins, 26% draws, and 26% away wins.

And in the 2006-2007 Italian league there were 173 home wins, 114 draws, and 93 away wins. That’s a distribution of 45% home wins, 30% draws, and 25% away wins.

Okay – so it’s pretty obvious what’s coming next isn’t it?

The stats of the Indonesia Super League so far this year (as of 20 March 2011) with 118 matches played?

84 home wins, 21 draws and just 13 away wins!!!!!!!!

Giving a distribution of 71% home wins, 18% draws, and 11% away wins!!!!!!!!



What the hell is going on!! Only 13 away wins in 118 games? You must be kidding me! Why would any supporter in Indonesia want to travel to an away game knowing there are "mysterious forces" working against their team?

Closer inspection of the league table reveals the following:

- Only one club in the whole league has won more than three away matches!

- 10 of the 15 clubs have NEVER lost at home!

- Excluding the bottom two clubs, none of the other clubs have lost more than once at home!

- Semen Padang in second place have never lost at home, but never won away!

- Persiwa in fourth place have never lost at home, but never won away!

- Deltras in 8th place have never lost at home, but never won away!

- Persijab (third from bottom) have never lost at home, but lost ALL their 10 away matches!

So what can explain why the Indonesian Super League is so incredibly uncompetitive? Is there something very wrong going on and shouldn’t someone be responsible?

Hmmm….

NB: It’s not very easy to find stats of the Indonesian Super League with a breakdown of the away and home games. Such a breakdown is rather conspicuously missing from all the websites I’ve ever visited. About the only place you can see them are in the BOLA daily sports newspaper.

There’s an old saying in Indonesia that hospitals are places you go to die, but be that as it may, the Cikini Hospital on Jalan Raden Saleh is well worth a quick visit if you happen to be in the area – perhaps after enjoying a meal in one of the Middle East themed nosh houses in the area like my favorite - the excellent Al-Jazeera restaurant which we had just visited.

From the front the hospital doesn’t look anything special, but if you walk through the main entrance you will find a wonderful old building constructed in the French neo-gothic and Moor architectural styles.

The old house as it was in 1890


As it stands 120 years later, photographed from almost the same spot. Not a lot has changed although – if you look carefully – you’ll notice the small cross on the top of the building has since been removed – a metaphor for today’s less tolerant times perhaps.

This grand old building was built in 1852 and is notable for being home to one of Indonesia’s greatest painters, Raden Saleh Syarif Bustaman (1814-1880) and his wife.

They lived there until Raden Saleh was arrested by the Dutch colonial authorities on “subversion” charges and the house was then sold to Sayid Abdullah bin Alwi Alatas – the wealthy Arab landlord of Menteng – before it became a hospital in 1897.

The building certainly has that wonderful old world feel to it, a harkening to ages long gone, and I could have sworn I saw a couple of bandaged Dutch soldiers sitting forlornly at the end of the corridor, smoking rolled up cigarettes.

But when I rubbed my eyes they were gone. And so was I. Cos you know what they say about hospitals. Don’t overstay your welcome or you may never be going home yourself...

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently
> Friedrich Nietzsche

So Wikileaks finally deliver the big one and accuse SBY of “abusing power”.

The cables say Dr Yudhoyono has personally intervened to influence prosecutors and judges to protect corrupt political figures and pressure his adversaries, while using the Indonesian intelligence service to spy on political rivals and, at least once, a senior minister in his own government. They also detail how Dr Yudhoyono’s former vice president reportedly paid millions of dollars to buy control of Indonesia’s largest political party, and accuse the President’s wife and her family of seeking to enrich themselves through their political connections.

Read the full article here.

The revelations are certainly astonishing in their boldness and have not gone down too well in the corridors of power with the Presidential Palace accusing the Age of defamation:

"Jelas berita ini sangat merugikan reputasi Presiden dan merupakan pencemaran nama baik dan fitnah," kata Julian saat dihubungi detikcom, Jumat (11/3/2011).

Former VP Jusuf Kalla is taking the bribery allegations against him in his stride, however, casually acknowledging that he paid off Golkar delegates to win the chairmanship of Golkar, during a December 2004 party congress:

“Hampir semua partai juga begitu,” ujarnya. “Itu bukan rahasia lagi.”

Trying to wriggle his way out of a tight situation, Kalla comes up with one of the best excuses ever by saying that the payoff of the delegates could not be considered as corruption since the money “came out of my own pocket”.

Oh of course.

The allegations against former president Megawati are just as serious and accuse her husband of ‘‘legendary corruption during his wife’s tenure’’.

All juicy stuff. But the world’s largest corruption case? Well, not quite.

That particular “honour” goes to the UN who devised a grand US$60bn oil-for-food programme, which was, and I quote here, “supposed to allow Iraq to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies with the proceeds of regulated oil sales, without breaking the sanctions imposed on it after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait”.

But what has this got to do with Indonesia? Well, you’ll find out if you read on.

From the very start, the US$60bn oil-for-food programme was fated to be an unmitigated disaster. There was so much money at stake and Iraq’s leader was that fine chap Saddam Hussein. And Saddam had a plan. Bribe. Bribe the whole damn world!

So Saddam decided to hand out “oil vouchers” to important politicians which the recipients could then redeem at a later date at huge profits (the vouchers allowed the owner to “sell on” a certain amount of Iraqi oil). And as their names were not recorded on the vouchers, the politicians believed they were taking no risks and that they could never be traced.

And they would have pulled it off but for one thing – Bush invaded Iraq.

This was a problem as the Iraqis had been diligently keeping records of whom they had been giving the vouchers to all along.

Uh oh!!!!!

And then the Iraqis decided to make the information available for the whole world to see.

Uh oh!!!!!

On the list are about 270 people including UN officials, politicians and companies.

And it makes fascinating reading.

Two rather famous Indonesian names are also on the list. Who are they? Well, you can find out here.

1. eat nasi padang using your fingers

2. piss on the bathroom floor rather than into the toilet closet

3. Have the aircon on all the bloody time

4. keep durian in the fridge

5. drive while texting - no problem lah

6. invite your sister and her three wild kids over on Saturday evening

7. leave the lights on all night long in the other rooms (to keep away the ghosts?)

8. insist that smoking is good for you (or at least better for you than alcohol) - cos that’s what the guy at the local house of worship said and he must be right, naturally, God bless him

9. nag him cos the roof leaks (all roofs in Indonesia leak!)

10. Tell him sex in the kitchen is totally “out of the question” but initiate proceedings while you’re parked roadside at Ancol in a cramped Honda Jazz.

11. refuse to go swimming during the day – it will turn you “black”

12. refuse to park a 5 minute walk from the entrance to the mall, and instead spend the next 30 minutes trying to look for a closer parking spot

13. buy him bright colored business shirts and expect him to wear them

14. give him tea without milk

15. insist that he “makes a donation” although he claims it’s another one of those typical bloody RT scams

16. insist that he can eat his steak with a spoon and fork

17. Give him a lie-in and wake him up at 5.30am. On a Saturday.

18. chuck out the newly bought bloody expensive stilton cos it wiffs a lot and you don’t want a bacterial orgy taking place in your refrigerator thank you very much (note #4 for the hypocrisy of this)

19. expect him to be “best of mates” with your gay pal at the fitness center who is more camp than, er, David

20. walk around the house naked but tell him he’s a weirdo if he does the same thing too.

21. tell him Pink Floyd et al. are complete SHIT.

22. spray Baygon all over the bloody place to get rid of roaches.

23. make him sandwiches using Blue Band margarine

24. use the washing machine’s spinner function even though the wet clothes would drip dry under the scorching tropical sun in five minutes flat

25. okay, so I’m not up to 365 yet, but you get my drift…