The Australian Rugby Union has partnered with digital consulting firm Accenture to deliver an innovative statistics platform which aims to improve the way the national team, the Qantas Wallabies, perform both on and off the field.
The new analytics tool built in conjunction with Accenture aims to provide the Wallabies with a digital edge by introducing a comprehensive 360-degree analysis of over 9,000 data points for more than 10,000 rugby union players across Australia. The new initiative has also been established to drive greater insights into player performance stats while ensuring Australian rugby is at the top of its game in both match performances and technology.
Enabling the data and insights to be combined together with the help of Accenture represented a smarter and more automated approach for the ARU and has ultimately led to a more effective way to manage all of this important data. The systems measuring the multitude of player data such as sleep, wellness, match stats and GPS tracking information were all stored separately which meant that a process was required to merge the data before it could be used in a combined fashion. Further improvements that were identified with the original approach for this high performance team being that players and coaches were unable to access this information as and when they wanted to.
As a result of bringing all of these new data sets together, the coaches and players now have access at their fingertips to track performances in training and matches via an app which features a personalized stats dashboard. The partnership further aims to reduce injuries, scout future rugby superstars and put the onus on players to drive their own performances all in the one digital place.
“Having one place to both get a complete snapshot of the player’s performance as well as having the ability to dive deeper in an analysis has been very beneficial,” Wallabies Head Performance Analyst Cathal Garvey said. “It gives us a solid foundation to enable us to provide timely, actionable insight to the coaches and players.”
Australian Rugby Union head of technology Kevin Stafford added, “This is a really exciting project for us not just in terms of what we are able to do now but it also opens up a world of other data sources that can be ingested and used in our Analysis. This is the first step in a bigger vision where we want to take data from far and wide throughout Australian Rugby at all levels to be able to gain visibility and build talent identification programs from early on in a player’s journey.”