GPSports

NEWS 2010
Goal! How data analytics drives sport teams to victory <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Dec 06 14:31 )</a>
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/london-irish-stadium-web.jpg" alt="" width="196" height="130" hspace="10" /> Sports teams are improving performances on and off the pitch by using analytics technology to get more from an ever-increasing volume of data. With data analytics predicted to be one of the most important strategic technologies for businesses in 2011 by Gartner, organisations are looking at how they can benefit from using it, with the technology finding a particular niche in the sports world. London Irish rugby union side and Premiership football club Manchester City have both been using data analytics for several years and intend to develop their use of the technology further. For London Irish business development director Chris Miles, the main objective is to make the data more useful. "The objective isn't to collect data - it's how can we manage the data we currently have. You can get paralysed by data. You can spend a huge amount of time providing more and more facts and figures, which can ultimately be meaningless if you don't make any decisions based on those facts and figures," Miles said. London Irish uses video analysis software SportsCode as well as GPSports, which collates GPS data about players during the game from the distance run to the g-force of tackles, which can be useful for managing injuries. The information generated then feeds into training as well as games. "Another key aspect in the system is linking training to match performance. If you talk about gut, you talk about instinct - they're all very important traits in a coach and a player but ultimately you need to be able to analyse facts," Miles said. "You can't use analytics to replace judgement - it supports it," he added. When Miles joined the club in April he sat down with the coaching staff and asked how they could improve the use of data. As a result the club started to use IBM Cognos business intelligence software to consolidate the data and provide summary information to identify useful trends. There are plans to extend the use of Cognos to other parts of the business. For example, it could be used to identify customer trends such as average attendances at matches. "If there's something we can do as a club to increase those average attendances from 12,000 up to 15,000, that massively impacts our ability to invest in our business." Miles said. Manchester City is in a slightly different situation to London Irish in that its ambitions have shifted significantly following its takeover 18 months ago by Abu Dhabi billionaire Sheikh Mansour. The club is now aiming to challenge Europe's top teams for trophies. As a result, the use of analytics has become increasingly important, according to Gavin Fleig, head of performance analysis at Manchester City. "What we try and do at Manchester City is open our eyes to the world of analytics and how it can try and help us improve our football performance," Fleig said. "The use of [analytics] technology is going to be vitally important [for the club's ambitions],"</div>
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With GPS, Indian hockey goes high-tech <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Oct 31 15:49 )</a>
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/indianhockey.jpg" alt="" width="195" height="165" hspace="10" /> Uthra G Chaturvedi Posted: Sat Oct 30 2010, 04:46 hrs New Delhi: When the Indian hockey team got together for their first proper training session ahead of the Asian Games at the National Stadium on Friday, they were expecting regular drills. Instead, they spent more than an hour trying to figure out a a system that included a tiny vest, a small instrument resembling a mobile phone and a belt to keep it in place. The GPS system to monitor players’ performance is being used for the first time by Indian hockey team, and Friday was Indian hockey’s introduction to what is considered one of the latest sports technologies. Developed by GPSports, the device, which is being used by renowned football teams including Chelsea, Juventus and Real Madrid, helps track the players’ agility, acceleration, speed, endurance and heart rate, besides helping decide on the maximum workload for individual players. It took some time for the players — and the team staff, including coaches Harendra Singh and Jose Brasa — to get used to it, and there was more fun than business during that time. With 15 individual units being provided to the team, a selected few from the squad were fitted with the device and asked to run short sprints to record their profiles, but certain glitches forced many of them to run repeatedly. When Shivendra Singh — number 7 on the list — was finally called upon for his turn, he was welcomed with catcalls and loud whoops by the rest of the team, and Tushar Khandker started his with a loud ‘yo’ even as others burst out into laughter.</div>
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<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;">Performance tracking systems in Trinidad &Tobago <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Oct 28 16:50 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/T&T.jpg" alt="" width="103" height="152" hspace="10" /> The GPSports Athlete Performance Tracking Systems which is used by top football clubs in Europe such as Manchester United, Chelsea FC and Real Madrid FC is now in T&T and may soon be part of the development programmes for national teams and local pro league clubs. This is after  local-based company Novel Sports Ltd, owned by former Naparima College student and cricketer Duane Lall acquired the sales agency for the world renowned program. GPSports designs, develops and manufactures miniaturised tracking technologies for athletes and fitness enthusiasts which stores and transmits training and performance data such as speed, acceleration, deceleration, ground impact, distance covered and heart rate. Lall has already met with Minister of Sport Anil Roberts and hopes to meet with TTFF officials with the aim of introducing the system into the local fraternity. “Establishing a global competitive advantage is not easy to achieve and maintain,” Lall said. “With the introduction of science, technology and engineering football players can gain a better understanding of their performance and determine their training plan for future sessions. Coaches will also acquire valuable data for athlete development, match preparation and selection.” The system being offered by Novel Sports will allow coaches to monitor player performance characteristics such as acceleration, deceleration, GPS co-ordinates, ground impact, heart rate, turns, speed and ground contact.  Lall added that soon to be implemented will be a  slow motion analysis for specific drills such as “spot” kicking along with the development of a performance database for trending the players’ performance parameters measured.</div>
<hr />GPSports Wins Export Grant Award 2010 <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Sep 09 20:38 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://gpsports.com/gpsports_website/exportaward.jpg"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/exportaward.jpg" alt="" width="109" height="161" hspace="10" /></a> GPSports has recently been awarded the prestigious ACT Small Business Export Award for 2010. This award is testament to the traction in the market that GPSports has gained in the past 12-months and our growing product popularity around the globe. With strong market penetration into the UK market, signing up key clients such as Manchester United, Liverpool & Arsenal Football Clubs as well as English and Irish Rugby programs, GPSports has dominated this market. GPSports will be attending the National final in late November 2010. </div>
<hr />2010 NRL Finals dominated by GPSports Clients <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Sep 08 21:15 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"> GPSports NRL clients have finished the season filling all 8 spots in this year's finals. GPSports has worked closely with many of our NRL clients over the past 12 months with several clubs using our technology in new and novel ways. GPSports has assisted in the decrease in many soft tissue injuries (with many clubs plagued by this problem in previous years). Also planning and periodisation of training has been modified partly due to the real time data outputs provided by GPSports performance analysis technologies. It is obviously hard to show any favouritism in this case but we wish all clubs their best performances over the coming weeks.</div>
<hr />GPSports Assists Football Stars <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Sep 06 18:05 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;">International examples of how GPSports is assisting clients in increasing performance and reducing injury. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVHfxrC7s4w&feature=channel" target="_blank">GPSports assists Nani in return to match fitness. (July 2010)</a> <a href="http://www.skysports.com/video/inline/0,26691,16460_6033818,00.html" target="_blank">GPSports assists Man U's Giggs to regain fitness. (April 2010)</a> <a href="http://www.weststigers.com.au/default.aspx?s=newsdisplay&id=23315" target="_blank">GPSports tracking West Tiger's star recruit, Lote Tuqiri. (April 2010)</a></div>
<hr />Sharks move into space age training <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Jul 09 18:24 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://gpsports.com/gpsports_website/ben-robinson.jpg"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/sale_sharks.jpg" alt="" hspace="10" /></a>BIG Brother will be watching Sale Sharks this season as part of new head coach Mike Brewer's mission to transform the Edgeley Park club's fortunes. The Kiwi has brought in some revolutionary state of the art technology to the Aviva Premiership club in a bid to monitor and improve each player's individual progress and to also prevent injuries from wrecking his plans ahead of the new season. It means there will be literally no hiding place for the players at Sale's Carrington training base with each squad member wearing a special Global Positioning Satellite tracking device as Brewer and his coaching staff monitor and mentor the Sale's player's progress. The cutting-edge technology, developed by GPSports Systems, monitors information beamed back from satellites in space, and has already in use at such football giants as Chelsea, United and Real Madrid as well as rugby giants the All Blacks and former Heineken Cup winners Leinster, where Brewer was forwards coach. But Sale have become only the second English rugby club, after champions Leicester, to implement the system in England. It hasn't come cheap and the club have appointed a new analyst, Dan Lynes to work with Nicola Cahill, to help get the most of the GPS. However, Brewer believes it's value will quickly become apparent. "In a lot of training sessions you are not entirely sure how hard those players are working be it with their heart rate, their acceleration or whatever, but the GPS system can tell us," said the former New Zealand star "It will allows us to build into our sessions a high level of intensity. And it will tell us if some players are hitting the mark we want and if some are falling a bit short and maybe need top-up sessions. "It will take away all the guesswork from our training. "But the second aspect is that they actually monitor force. If a player is favouring one leg or one hip or knee it will measure the displacement and the way the athlete is running. "That means we can start picking up on things before a soft tissue injury occurs. "So if you've got guys who are renowned for hamstring or calf injuries, we can tailor things accordingly as the GPS will monitor every step, every function, and every change of direction they take. "The cost is expensive as far as a capital cost - about two thirds of the cost of what we would term a squad player. "But if it can keep more than one player on the training field and make them available to play, then its paying for itself. "We've got 36 units so everyone in the first team squad will be monitored. They include heart rate monitors and I know from using them at Leinster that if we noticed someone's rate was way above where it should be there was a 150 per cent chance it would lead to an injury. "That meant we took the player out of training and so we reduced soft tissue injuries by about 50 or 60 per cent. It all about paying for itself and the well being of the athlete."</div>
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<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;">Training upped as Robbie Deans plots revamp <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Jun 27 22:53 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://gpsports.com/gpsports_website/ben-robinson.jpg"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/ben-robinson.jpg" alt="" width="115" height="154" hspace="10" /></a>BIG Brother will be watching the Wallabies over the next fortnight as coach Robbie Deans prepares to revamp his squad for the massive challenge posed by the upcoming Tri Nations. There will be no hiding as each player will wear a GPS tracking device to record the training they do. Players will work in groups at their home bases with Wallabies strength and conditioning coach Peter Harding and other coaches travelling around to check progress. "This time last year we didn't have the GPS but when they returned it wasn't hard to see who had done the work and who hadn't," Deans said. "It's no different, it's just that we are able to be a bit more scientific."</div>
<hr />Wenger to track players from SPACE in bid to stop Arsenal <a style="font-size: 9px;">( May 24 21:51 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://gpsports.com/gpsports_website/arsenal.jpg"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/arsenal.jpg" alt="" width="110" height="82" hspace="10" /></a>Arsene Wenger will track his players from SPACE next season to prevent injuries from yet again wrecking the club’s title bid. The Arsenal boss has been without up to a dozen players at any one time this season, including defender William Gallas and Robin van Persie. Now Wenger intends to use satellites to monitor his stars’ susceptibility to injury in a bid to rectify the problem. Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis explained: “If there are things we can do we will do them. For example, we’ve introduced a GPS system this year for the first time. “This is tracking literally from satellites in space, the training movements on the training field of every player. “It gives you a lot of information. It tells you not just how far the players are running and how fast they are running and what levels of intense activity they have in training. “It also measures something called ‘the load’ – and this is literally the amount of time a player’s foot is on the ground while he is running. “You can see if you have a player coming up to a risk of injury in a subsequent game because you can see two things in general: one is that their work-rate comes down in training and secondly their ‘load’ increases. In other words, their foot stays on the ground for longer when they run. “When you are feeling good and feeling active you are more on your toes. When you’re not, you’re more on your heels. That can help you to predict when players are in a dangerous situation. “Unfortunately, it takes a while to build that record to get the full benefit of that system. “So we are unlikely to see the benefits really coming through until the second half of next year,” he said. <a href="http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Arsene-Wenger-will-track-players-from-SPACE-in-a-bid-to-stop-Arsenal-s-injury-problems-article426563.html">Arsenal and GPSports></a></div>
<hr />STAR WARS <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Apr 19 17:01 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://cde.cerosmedia.com/1L4bc86d0b63ba3012.cde/page/24"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/Rooney_MU.jpg" alt="" width="111" height="173" hspace="10" /> </a>"Manchester United star striker Wayne Rooney using GPSports technology during training. <a href="http://cde.cerosmedia.com/1L4bc86d0b63ba3012.cde/page/24">GPSports assists EPL & RFU</a>. Tech wizards, GPSports, who have developed the SPI Pro, an innovative GPS based athlete performance tracking system, powers the training of Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Leinster, The RFU, the All Blacks and the Wallabies. The detailed information gained from this technology has helped to reduce injuries, develop game and position-specific training plans, and boost squad fitness. "Our key clients how have the lowest injury rates in the league". Says GPSports Managing Director, Adrian Faccioni. "This is due to the ability to accurately monitor the loading for every player." If a player's position requires them to do a lot of lateral movement or sprints in a game, coaches can train them accordingly. Our next product, the SPI Pro X, records data a 15 times a second, so we'll soon know every blade of grass covered."</div>
<hr />How data is changing the way we play sports <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Mar 15 15:21 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://gpsports.com/gpsports_website/ukrugby_gps.jpg"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/ukrugby_gps.jpg" alt="" width="193" height="81" hspace="10" /> </a>"Who to pick for the team this week?" has always been the toughest question in sports management. Now, sports performance indicator (SPI) monitors are taking the guesswork out of coaching and training. "They tell you what to do -- and what not to do," says Gareth Gilbert, 37, who works for the Canberra-based technology firm GP Sports Systems. A SPI monitor can now be as small as a deck of cards. Worn across the shoulders, it packs in GPS, heartrate monitor, digital compass, gyroscope and accelerometer. Whether in training or in play, it can transmit real-time data on speed, direction, jumps, impact loads, distance and heart rate to anywhere in world, five times a second. In the Premiership League, Chelsea and Fulham are using the technology, and Man United is believed to be interested too. However, it's taking off fastest in elite rugby. "We have to be as clever as possible," says Allan Ryan, 30, head of strength and conditioning at London Irish, who regards the new SPIs as an "insurance policy" that will help youngsters such as 22-year-old centre Adam Thompstone (above) have a longer career. By revealing "body load" -- total stress -- SPI monitors can prevent overtraining. "In the past, players aimed to finish a session last, to prove their fitness," says Ryan. "Now they're finishing first -- showing they've reached their targets."And a big surprise, says Ryan, is that one-to-one sessions (traditionally regarded as "light") can take a heavy toll. Coaches in Australian Rugby League are also using the monitors to time substitutions or select players for specific functions such as man-marking. British teams are limited to using the devices in training. But with nine Aussie coaches currently in the UK Super League alone, pressure for change is building.</div>
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<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;">Bradford Bulls' trial of GPS could help England close the gap on Australia <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Jan 13 15:43 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://gpsports.com/gpsports_website/bradfordbulls.jpg"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/bradfordbulls.jpg" alt="" width="135" height="84" hspace="10" /> </a> Michael Fisher - Telegraph The club have received permission from the Rugby Football League to try GPSports' GPS system for the first time in Sunday's Matt Diskin testimonial match against Leeds at Headingley, with a view to using it in their Engage Super League opener at Huddersfield on Feb 5. The device, which is placed in a harness incorporated into a vest, is used to monitor heart-rates and track a player's movement around the field. "It's a huge advancement in terms of sports science that we're starting to grasp," said McNamara. "It will advance our game massively. If every club and every player had it, it would be great from an international perspective. "We used them with England in the Four Nations and we gained some fantastic information." McNamara, who was assistant to former England coach Tony Smith, admits the system could be used to help decide when to substitute a player during a match. "It's in its early stages but it's amazing what you can do," he said. "It's a live system as well so you're getting a constant feed. Every physical aspect is tracked. You know exactly how far you've run in 80 minutes of rugby league, what speeds you get to and how many impacts you get and what that takes out of the body." Bradford's new head of physical performance Geoff Evans said: "We will endeavour to use this information to improve all aspects of our preparation and performance for the coming season."</div>
<hr />The pioneers: Adrian Faccioni <a style="font-size: 9px;">( Jan 11 15:02 )</a> 
<div class="newsitem" style="background-color: transparent;">How an Australian decathlete's adventures in GPS technology are changing modern sport <a href="http://gpsports.com/gpsports_website/SaracensGPS.jpg"><img style="float: right;" src="http://www.gpsports.com/gpsports_website/SaracensGPS.jpg" alt="" width="136" height="81" hspace="10" /> </a> Emma John, The Observer It was a windsurfer with a satnav who started it all. Adrian Faccioni watched him take to the water with the unwieldy box strapped to his arm so that he could measure his speed. "He had a big laptop in his backpack, a satellite dish on his head and all these cables down his arm," says Faccioni. "I thought, 'Oh boy.'" The Australian, a former decathlete, saw how valuable a personal GPS device that measured an athlete's movement could be. Six months later, he resigned from his job as a lecturer in Sports Coaching and found a software developer to help pursue his idea. Within a couple of years they had developed their first device, which could tell a coach, in real time, exactly how fast and how far their athletes were moving. When he showed the technology to coaches of Australian rules football, they leapt at the possibilities. "The biggest problem team sports have had in the past is they never know how hard an athlete has trained," explains Faccioni, from his home in Canberra. "Heart rate doesn't give a true indication – you can have high heart rate if you don't feel well. Coaches didn't know if players were training hard enough." Faccioni's GPS data proved that players were actually training too hard. "Often the sessions didn't look as hard as they were. Players would do some sprinting and then stand around. But they were running multiple kilometres on the Thursday or Friday before a match, and would go into a game carrying residual fatigue." In the nine years since Faccioni founded his company, the GPS units have become more sophisticated: the most recent is fitted with an accelerometer that measures the effect of sprinting and tackling on the body in terms of G-force. With all this live data fed to the bench, coaches are able to make far more informed decisions about the physical state of players – in particular, when to make substitutions. "We set up alerts for when a player's heart rate's too high or they've done too much sprinting," explains Faccioni. In Aussie rules, which allows unlimited player "exchanges", the average number of exchanges per match has risen from 20-30 to 70-80 since GPS units were introduced. Rugby union and football are already embracing the technology, and this year Real Madrid, Man United, Milan and Ajax all put in orders. And Faccioni hopes his units will, eventually, be able to monitor everything that is happening in an athlete's body. "At the moment, measuring glucose or lactic acid or pH is not easy to do live, but there are some early stage technologies doing the rounds." If he cracks it, the one-time decathlete could change every sport played.</div>
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