The new face of digital tactics?

Data analysis takes time. The analysis itself can be completed relatively quickly but the data collection and organisation is often a bit of an effort. However, the process of data collection regularly prompts other questions, questions different to the one originally being investigated.

And this is what happened the other day when I was recording some aspects of attacking play between Australia and South Africa, not from the recent Olympics, but from the 2022 World Cup where again the two countries found themselves in the same pool.

What I noticed was that a number, nearly all in fact, of the South African players were wearing watches.

This is Kristen Paton who also played in the last Olympics and is currently in the HDM squad in the Dutch Hoofdklasse. And there prominent on her wrist, is a watch.

It seemed, looking more closely, that for this tournament the South African squad may not have had a wearable GPS system, the kind most teams wear on their backs in a pocketed vest or, as the Belgium team now do, as a strap on their arms. It could be that South Africa were under some budgetary constraints and they had bought a load of GPS enabled smart watches to at least provide some spatial and performance metrics (heartbeat, speed, distance) even though these watches don’t gather as much detail (no acceleration, deceleration, torque etc) as Catapult and other like systems.

But then I saw that The Australian player, Claire Colwill, was also wearing a watch.

And looking at some of the more recent Olympic match video there was Charlotte Stapenhorst, among a number of other players, wearing a watch even though Germany clearly had GPS units tucked between their shoulder blades.

So maybe it was just personal preference. Perhaps, wearing a watch has nothing to do with providing information, it is just something some players do, despite the fact that their left hand is often in harms way.

All of this meandering came somewhat after my first realisation that players were wearing watches because what I noticed first was not Paton or Colwill and their wrist adornments, but this.

This is Tarryn Lombard and just as South Africa are getting ready to take a penalty corner in that World Cup pool game, she looks at her watch. This simple, everyday, common-or-garden action made me think - why? Why is Lombard looking at her watch in the middle of a World Cup match?

The players were getting set up each in their respective places and a corner is an obvious pause in the game so maybe she is just checking the time. Or it could be that she is monitoring her heart rate. But perhaps, I thought, she was reading a text sent through the Terrassa airwaves from the team’s coach telling her what attacking routine to run.

Now, I have no idea whether she was, or was not receiving a message. But the point is that it’s clearly feasible to use smart watch technology to communicate directly with players on the pitch. Of course one can shout instructions from the sideline; one can wave one’s arms around to signal a message, one can send players on with the required information, or one can wait for the end of a quarter.

Nevertheless, the idea that instead of these sideline antics one could send a text to a corner group; to an individual to alter some aspect of her play; to the team to change a particular playing structure during the game without having to broadcast that communication, or have the message eroded through Chinese whispers, is a thought to conjure with. The players are clearly wearing watches already so the logistics is in place.

Curiously, now I wonder at the implications, it is a thought I hadn’t considered before seeing Lombard glance at her timepiece.