Irish Institute of Sport Performance Analysis Workshop
3rd November 2011
The Irish institute of Sport (IIS) hosted the inaugural performance analysis (PA) workshop in FAI headquarters on Thursday 3rd November. The workshop was attended by some of the top sports performance analysts in the country from a wide variety of sports including athletics, triathlon, hockey, boxing, rugby, tennis, cricket and swimming.
The workshop began with an insightful address from Kenny More from Elite sports analysis in Scotland. Kenny has a vast amount of experience from almost 20 sports and that was evident from his presentation entitled ‘Improving feedback through performance analysis’, within which he highlighted the key role that PA can play within the high performance sporting environment. He created a strong case that PA can provide critical performance related information which when applied correctly can underpin the service delivery across all service areas within any high performance sporting environment.
During the afternoon sessions three case studies from analysts working in Ireland were presented. The first by Alan Swanton (IIS) illustrated the performance analysis system which is currently in place within the high performance unit of the Irish Amateur Boxing association. Johnny Bradley from the Sports Institute Northern Ireland delivered a thought provoking piece on the importance of providing performance related feedback in a context which can promote learning for the athlete and coach. While Tristan Stedham concluded the day with a duel presentation which included a snapshot of his service delivery during the Men’s hockey European Championships in Germany this summer. While he also outlined an innovative project which Irish hockey are currently undertaking with a research group called CLARITY and Disney research. The project aims to develop an automated (ball tracking) broadcast quality camera system which once developed can be used across a wide variety sports all over the world.
Alan Swanton, performance analyst at the IIS remarked ‘The workshop was resounding success as it was the first time the performance analysis community in Ireland had come together to begin to exchange ideas. While a wide variety of sports are represented here today, we all face the same challenges with regard to video capture and data processing. There was a wealth of experience in the room today which we hope to bring together on a more regular basis’.