It started with ten years’ worth of strength and conditioning reports on printed Excel sheets in a storage cupboard at Leinster. That and a curious mind. Now Stephen Smith is turning his analytical focus to the task of unearthing the world’s first female Formula 1 champion and identifying prospective managers for leading football clubs.
Quite the journey. Smith found his way to Leinster via a childhood in Kildare, schooling at the Cistercian College in Roscrea, and a degree in sports and exercise rehabilitation at the Institute of Technology in Carlow. Leinster? That started out as a few months of work experience and stretched to over six years of enormous growth for him and for the club.
Michael Cheika was a huge part in all that. The Australian head coach was an uber-intense individual who transformed an under-performing organisation. He was also a data convert after using it to build a successful career in the fashion industry.
Among his early frustrations in Dublin was the time it was taking to get stars like Brian O’Driscoll, Felipe Contepomi and Gordon D’Arcy off the injury list. Among the questions Cheika asked was how their layoffs compared to players with similar injuries. Were Leinster’s taking longer? And, if so, why? No-one had the answers: the information simply wasn’t there.
This was around the time that Smith started to digitise that decade’s supply of old Excel printouts. Cheika was all ears. “One thing I loved about his approach was that there.
