Effects of travel

Abstract

Playing sport at home is advantageous for the home team for many reasons including fan support, familiarity but probably most of all they don’t have to travel. The away team must overcome changes to their normal routines and protocols, put up with what can sometimes be a hostile home crowd as well as getting through the negative effects of travel. Previous work in this area shows that home teams typically win more than 50% of their games due to their familiarity with conditions, local encouraging crowds, and lack of travel, with teams less likely to win away games particularly if their required travel is long-haul (George et al. 2015; Lo et al. 2021; Read et al. 2021). This information requires practitioners like strength and conditioning trainers and coaches to consider the negative effects of travel when performance planning.