News Collingwood Football Club using "big data analytics"

[MagpieJoel]

Collingwood Football Club kicking goals with data analytics

The AFL club has partnered with Pure Storage to put the club's data to work and move away from decisions based on gut feel.

By Asha McLean | August 21, 2017 -- 22:03 GMT (08:03 AEST) | Topic: Big Data Analytics

FULL ARTICLE: http://www.zdnet.com/article/collingwood-football-club-kicking-goals-with-data-analytics/

Collingwood Football Club has turned to analytics to help coaching staff make better decisions on and off the field, using data to gain a competitive advantage.

Speaking with ZDNet about the partnership, Mike Sakalas, regional vice president for Pure Storage in Australia and New Zealand, said making use of the data available gives Collingwood the ability to achieve good outcomes for its fans, players, and various other stakeholders.

"What they're looking to achieve is to take all of those data points from individual players, whether that's their own or people they're looking to recruit in, and be able to crunch numbers and be able to make decisions, whether it be during the recruiting process, the game, after a game, or questioning moves that they have made," Sakalas explained.

With sensors attached to the players by way of fitness trackers and other peripherals already, Sakalas said the combination of data will allow the coaching staff, for example, to make decisions based on data, rather than gut.

"It takes some of that second-guessing out," he added.

Collingwood is using Pure Storage's FlashArray//M system, in a VMware vSphere environment. With the tech churning through the data in the background, the club is able to analyse player information in real-time to aid the coach's decision-making.

Using on-field sensors, the team monitors everything from kicks, marks, and handballs, to scoring locations for each team, and analysing and mapping passages of play.

Interesting, though I'm surprised footy clubs have taken this long to cotton on to the need to understand their data properly.

 

[Cousin of Daicos]

Wait...our coaching panel have been going off "gut feel" all this time?

I just...I....ugh.

 

[MagpieJoel]

Wait...our coaching panel have been going off "gut feel" all this time?

I just...I....ugh.

I doubt it. I think the issue is that there is so much data it can be difficult to understand, so I assume that this will assist them to do so. But, I could be wrong.

 

[Jasper84]

So we have analysed your data and noticed a few anomalies.

One player's entry says that he couldn't complete this year's required tasks because he had a hip injury, but then it was changed to an ankle injury, despite him not appearing to do anything at all.

Another player turned off his gameday GPS because he was "meeting the vice president of the USA"?

And there's two listed players whose devices must have been malfunctioning for 2 years because the results say that they were in QLD the whole time.

 

[Magpie Monopoly]

Don't like the sounds of this. The more radical the changes elsewhere the less likely there will be radical changes with our coaching staff.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Scodog10]

Don't like the sounds of this. The more radical the changes elsewhere the less likely there will be radical changes with our coaching staff.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

Spot on. This is just one big smokescreen for the FD being completely inept. Only at Collingwood!

 

[Magpie Monopoly]

Spot on. This is just one big smokescreen for the FD being completely inept. Only at Collingwood!

Just reeks of "we are doing our best to try other things".

Seems more like something to chuck up on a PowerPoint to the board than anything else.


On iPhone using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Saintly Viewed]

Somebody will be making money out of this.

 

[Chief Ten Beers]

Oh Collingwood. You don't need Big Data stats to understand Blair probably shouldn't be getting a game, week in week out.

 

[PieBeast]

And if this doesn't work there's always Juju.

You have been warned.

 

[swoop42]

Wouldn't it be easier to just sack the coach?

FMD talk about trying to pull out any rabbit.

 

[swoop42]

Oh Collingwood. You don't need Big Data stats to understand Blair probably shouldn't be getting a game, week in week out.

It's the pressure act stat keeping him in.

Let that sink in when deciding if this is a good idea.

 

[General Soreness]

It's hard to know just what the club wants out of this as the article doesn't appear have any input from them - only from someone from the company who admits that he only thinks he knows. The article reads more like an ad for Pure Storage, which is understandable. It's also unclear from the article if the club has already started using the service, and if they haven't started when they will start using it.

I'd like to know how this is going to affect particular dynamics and relationships in and between the club, coaches, and player groups. How does this change notions of responsibility between coaches and players? To what extent does the increasing resort to statistics make the job of the coach more stressful? Does it mean coaches have fewer excuses for failure? How does it change the way clubs structure their expectations of medical facilities and services? Is there a limit to how far coaching can be pushed into the statistical away from the personal? And so on, and so on.

 

[MagpieJoel]

the article doesn't appear have any input from them.

Yes it does.

Before deploying FlashArray//M, Collingwood had to prune the data it wished to keep online, due to the low capacity of its legacy system. The club's databases and web applications are now also working faster and more efficiently on the M-array, added Marcus Wagner, Football Operations Manager at Collingwood FC.

 

[ottoman]

So we have money to spend when it comes to looking at stats but we wont spend money on ruck coaches or a bigger better recruiting team etc.
Priorities not right if you ask me.
Sure spend money to get any advantage you can, but make sure you are covering all the basics first.

 

[MagpieJoel]

Why do people always make comments like everything is mutually exclusive? Like doing one thing precludes another?

 

[76woodenspooners]

Here's what an ex-Nokia (remember them?) employee thinks about big data ...

 

[76woodenspooners]

Why do people always make comments like everything is mutually exclusive? Like doing one thing precludes another?

Because so much of what people experience in the world is a zero sum game?

 

[General Soreness]

Yes it does.

Sure, you can say that has the appearance of having the input of the club, but it also might not be an instance of input from the club (I'd go for the latter, as I stated). Also, it's not a very interesting or significant piece of input (which is the subtext in my point).

What I had in mind was a statement or two more clearly identifiable as being from the club or a representative of the club. The section of the article you highlight could have come from Pure Storage - it's not a quote from the club, it's just expressing, anonymously, the state of affairs at the club at some point, a state of affairs that could easily have come from the club or from Pure Storage. In any case, there's nothing that could be positively taken as sourced from the club that addresses the issues I'm interested in.

 

[Bad Horse]

 

[Scodog10]

Why do people always make comments like everything is mutually exclusive? Like doing one thing precludes another?

Because that's what happens at Collingwood. Until we decide to pay the FD tax it'll always be a case of picking and choosing what we invest in.

It's a complex topic this one so I'm at pains to not oversimplify it, but if you have the right people in the right places the need for this type of investment in analytics isn't as important because those people are good at their job and make the right decisions. The type and volume of data doesn't impact on them enough to sway them when they know they're right.

 

[Bad Horse]

Sure, you can say that has the appearance of having the input of the club, but it also might not be an instance of input from the club (I'd go for the latter, as I stated). Also, it's not a very interesting or significant piece of input (which is the subtext in my point).

It is an interesting one. Thats a very basic pull quote, but it does suggest we had sign-off on the story and maybe Collingwood media would have been consulted.

Normally when you are doing this kind of thing you have contract protections requiring no publicity or use of name or trademark without approval from your contract partner. Analytics can be cowboy heavy though so nothing is guaranteed.

A fellow technical officer at my university had this problem recently. The university was looking to acquire some sports analytics hardware and my friend would be responsible for it. They had settled on one supplier and asked for a quote, and happened to check the supplier's website and found (surprise surprise) the supplier had already loaded our logo onto their website as a "valued partner" and put out a release.

Analytics is the coming thing here though. I posted last year about this time on it, Collingwood had a big presence at a sports analytics conference in Melb and it was clear we were heading in this direction both on field and off. I'm told we had a decent presence there again this year, and it was only a couple of weeks ago.

https://www.analyticsinsport.com/australia/

 

[barrackers]

Before deploying FlashArray//M, Collingwood had to prune the data it wished to keep online, due to the low capacity of its legacy system. The club's databases and web applications are now also working faster and more efficiently on the M-array, added Marcus Wagner, Football Operations Manager at Collingwood FC.

So, basically we've out sourced our data storage to a third party increasing capacity and retrieval speed.

 

[General Soreness]

Here's what an ex-Nokia (remember them?) employee thinks about big data ...

An unexpected pleasure. Neat. Good to see the notion of thick description (under another name) getting more exposure.

 

[Bad Horse]

So, basically we've out sourced our data storage to a third party increasing capacity and retrieval speed.

And given that data includes biometric data such as heart rate associated with athlete performance and health, may well be in breach of both the Health Records Act 2001 and the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 without even knowing it.