Once upon a time coaching sport was deceptively simple. Many years of experience could be distilled into a gut instinct of how best to respond in certain situations. Selection was more of an art and less of a science and you didn’t have smarty-pants analysts telling you stuff that – damn it! – you could already see with your own eyes from 50 yards away.
Pray for the old-timers because rugby’s tech era is well and truly here. Nowadays, one game spawns millions of pieces of usable data. Wearable technology attached to one player can collect information from 300 data points at a rate of 40 times per second.
Skeletal tracking, microchipped balls – less painful than it sounds – and myriad other previously invisible markers are now routinely available. Farewell, then, leaky Biros and old‐school clipboards. Related: Wigglesworth set to be part of Farrell’s British & Irish Lions coaching team It is certainly educational – and sobering – to get an update direct from Silicon Valley in California, where one of the high priests of the new normal is based.
Sitting at his desk, with sport’s future at his fingertips, is an Irishman named Stephen Smith, founder and chief executive of Kitman Labs, a global performance intelligence and technology company specialising in injury welfare and analytics. Among the company’s 2,000 clients are the Premier League, the NFL and the Rugby Football Union and it is easy to see why they are interested. Much individual data is meaning.
