In the aftermath of the World Cup, the English game’s Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project (PRISP) is continuing and will now switch its regular focus to domestic competitions.

PRISP monitors the injury risk of players at Premiership, European and England level. It is underpinned by a powerful information management and medical recording system from The Sports Office. 

The Rugby Squad

The system captures medical and injury data generated by England’s players. This includes major competitions such as the Rugby World Cup, where South Africa defeated them in the final 32-12. The system also operates 365-days a year to monitor players’ training and competing for their clubs. PRISP is the most comprehensive and longest-running injury surveillance study in professional rugby. This project is overseen by Senior Medical personnel.

The Sports Office Head of Client Services, Andy Gorski commented: “PRISP provides the game in England with important data to support the improvement of player welfare and effective medical management.” 

Gorski added: “Our system is a powerful tool which supports rugby’s sports medicine and performance practitioners in this important area. We look forward to working with all the PRISP stakeholders in the future.”

RFU Chief Medical Officer Simon Kemp has previously commented on the Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project. He said: “[PRISP] is an important study that helps us understand injury trends in the professional game in England.”

Other Sports Office clients also featured in the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Ireland and Argentina both use our performance management system for elite rugby. 

The Sports Office

The ‘Rugby Squad’ offers a range of powerful functions for coaching, fitness, video, data analysis, and medical management. Management information and data generated by players is available in real-time to coaching and fitness staff, via The Sports Office App and our Monitoring App.

Many elite rugby organizations throughout the world are among The Sports Office’s varied client base. As well as governing bodies such as the RFU, IRFU and Argentina Rugby Union, teams in the SANZAR Super Rugby competition and the Australian NRL are also users.

The Rugby Squad users also include current Rugby League Super League Champions St Helens and teams in North America’s Major League Rugby. 

• To learn more about our performance management systems for elite rugby, contact us today.

The Match Hub provides significant additional benefits for coaches and analysts in elite football. This new page brings together goal scoring analysis, fixtures and game-time to improve overall workflow and usability. 

 The new functionality means users can drag and drop players onto a new 3D pitch from an enhanced players list. This list now includes details such as positions, appearances and potential game minutes. Users can also apply filters to see players’ individual match minutes.

There is a new ‘opposition rating’ field which is customisable. This allows users to report on how many minutes a player has played against different categories of opposition. For example, how many minutes Player A has played against an opponent, categorised as ‘very easy’.

Users can also now add a player’s game time, match minutes, position, goals and disciplines from this page. This saves significant time.

A new ‘Match timeline’ incorporates the goal-scoring analysis section of the system within the Match Hub. Users can drop a football icon onto the timeline to highlight goal scoring in the match. This can also be done for bookings and sending-offs, substitutions or positional changes.

All this functionality then feeds data to the Reports Hub, ready for analysis.

For more information on The Match Hub and how it can assist your coaching and analysis team, contact The Sports Office now.

The Sports Office would like to congratulate one of our oldest rugby clients, St Helens, on their performance this season. After a five-year wait, they are Super League Champions once again.

Saints defeated Salford Red Devils 23-6 in the Grand Final at Old Trafford. They produced a dominant display to secure the Super League trophy.

Saints’ players not involved with international teams will now enjoy a break before starting pre-season training for the 2020 Super League campaign.

Many elite rugby organisations throughout the world are among The Sports Office’s varied client base. As well as governing bodies such as the RFU, the Irish Rugby Union and Argentina Rugby Union, teams in the SANZAR Super Rugby competition and the Australian NRL are also users.  The Rugby Squad users also include clubs in the UK’s Rugby League Super League and teams in North America’s Major League Rugby.

To find out more about our athlete management system for elite rugby, used by champion clubs like St Helens, contact us now.

The Sports Office team sends its congratulations to Canberra Raiders, who capped a fine season in Australia’s NRL with an appearance in last weekend’s Grand Final.

Unfortunately, the Raiders were defeated 14-8 by Sydney Roosters in the showpiece event, despite a brave and committed display. But they qualified for the NRL title-decider thanks to much improved performances throughout the year.

In 2018, Canberra began using The Sports Office athlete management system for elite rugby. At the time, Head of Client Services, Andy Gorski, travelled to the Australian capital to deliver a full system implementation. All Raiders’ teams, including the first-grade side, the Jersey Flegg team plus the Junior and Women’s teams use our ‘Rugby Squad’ platform.

The Raiders benefit from the system’s range of powerful functions to support coaching, sports medicine, sports science and sports administration at elite level. They have also used the system to assist with injury prevention and sports analytics.

Andy Gorski commented: “We have followed the progress of Canberra Raiders this season with great interest and we congratulate them on their achievement of reaching the NRL Grand Final.

“We look forward to continuing our work with them. Supporting their use of our Rugby Squad system so they gain even more from it and optimise all aspects of performance and preparation.”

Many elite rugby organisations throughout the world are among The Sports Office’s varied client base. As well as governing bodies such as the RFU, the Irish Rugby Union and Argentina Rugby Union, teams in the SANZAR Super Rugby competition and the Australian NRL are also users.  The Rugby Squad users also include clubs in the UK’s Rugby League Super League and teams in North America’s Major League Rugby.

• To learn more about our performance management systems for elite rugby, contact us today.

Injury and medical data generated by England’s players during the current Rugby World Cup tournament is being captured by The Sports Office system used in the Professional Rugby Injury Surveillance Project (PRISP).  

England has made a successful start to the tournament. They won their first three games against Tonga, the U.S.A and Argentina and play their final group match against France this Saturday (12th October).

PRISP

The PRISP is the most comprehensive and longest-running injury surveillance study in professional rugby. It monitors injury risk of players at Premiership, European and England level. The project is lead by RFU Chief Medical Officer Simon Kemp.  

The study is intended to improve professional player welfare. The project was first commissioned in 2002 and was jointly created by the RFU, Premier Rugby and the Rugby Players Association. 

The Sports Office worked with senior medical staff at the RFU to design and develop a powerful system. It allows sports medicine and performance personnel at participating clubs and England teams to easily input an extensive range of medical and performance data. Information can be shared quickly and easily through the system so that coaches, directors of rugby and other key staff can receive vital data. The system also generates baselines and create comprehensive reports. This allows users to identify patterns and trends of injuries via comparison with previous seasons.

The Rugby Squad across the world

The Sports Office performance management system for elite rugby is also in use during the Rugby World Cup by Ireland and Argentina. Both nations have recently adopted the system which offers elite teams a range of powerful functions. Management information and data generated by the Ireland and Argentina squads will be readily available, and accessible in real-time. The respective coaching and fitness staff can input and view this via The Sports Office App and our Monitoring App. Our systems also support coaching, fitness, video, data analysis and medical management.   

Many elite rugby organisations throughout the world are among The Sports Office’s varied client base. As well as governing bodies such as the RFU, the Irish Rugby Union and Argentina Rugby Union, teams in the SANZAR Super Rugby competition and the Australian NRL are also users. The Rugby Squad users also include clubs in the UK’s Rugby League Super League and teams in North America’s Major League Rugby.

• To learn more about our performance management systems for elite rugby, contact us today.

The Sports Office’s Director of Development, Craig Bailey has attended the 2019 International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam. He was able to gain insights for improving the video analysis functions within our athlete management systems.

The event attracted over 400 delegates. Craig met with representatives of Microsoft to discuss the company’s latest advancements. He met with video analysis specialists Kaltoura to understand their future developments. There he was also able to view groundbreaking technologies, including 8K video and OTT streaming.

Craig Bailey commented: “The International Broadcasting Convention is an important event. We regularly attend it, in order to ensure the video functionality within our athlete management systems are fully optimised and use the latest advancements in video technology.”

The video analysis module within The Sports Office systems accepts XML files from third-party data sources including Opta, STATSport and Sportscode. Players and athletes can view footage and watch tagged sequences in real-time, to improve learning and personal development.

Another key feature is the video annotation toolkit. Analysts can pause footage and annotate the screen with feedback for players and in-game video analysis.

The Sports Office development team will continue to enhance these game-changing video features. Alongside other areas of our systems including medical, sports science and coaching.

To find out more about our Performance Management System for elite sport, contact us now.

Following an update, users can now create alerts for any performance or monitoring metric within The Sports Office’s Athlete Management system. These include a wide range of player performance indicators, personal goals and milestones.

This latest feature is one of many new enhancements now available. The new functionality will benefit all staff and departments within an elite sporting organisation; including coaches, sports medicine, financial and performance staff. 

This development also benefits Senior Management as they receive automated triggers when the players reach their milestones.

For example, when a player reaches a target number of first-team appearances in a particular competition, the appropriate system users will receive an alert.

These may include a notification to administration/finance staff which triggers a bonus payment. Alternatively, the coaching staff may receive a reminder. This is to enhance their communication and feedback process with the player concerned.

Other alerts which may be set in the system include medical and rehabilitation milestones and medication management. It is also possible to create alerts for any metric on the system.

For more information on the latest release, or about our Athlete Management Systems, contact us now.

The latest deployment of new features and functionality is LIVE across The Sports Office Athlete Management Systems. 

A variety of enhancements have been developed which benefit all aspects of performance management in elite sport. These include overall system enhancements and improvements to medical, administration, reporting and coaching functionality.

Medical Enhancements

The Electronic Medical Record system has seen various enhancements to improve overall record-keeping related to medications and vaccinations.

Users can now easily add medication and supplements to the decimal point from the main medical status page.

The ability to add medications or vaccinations to multiple players at once is also now available to medical users. 

Finally, a number of developments around to enhance the medical review process are live. Reporting across all prescribed medications, vaccinations and nutritional supplements for players is now available.

Financial and Performance Alerting

One of the most exciting developments this quarter enables users to create alerts for any metric within the system. 

Although medical alerts have been available for some time, staff users can now set up alerts for players’ performance indicators, goals or milestones. Financial recognition and contractual bonuses are among uses for the alerts.

For example, if a player reaches a set number of appearances in a particular competition, an alert will be sent. This will then alert admin to payout that bonus for reaching the milestone.

Match Hub 

This is a highly significant development and new feature which brings together three elements of coaching functionality.

These are team selection, game time and fixtures. There are also enhancements to other processes such as video, gym sessions and analysis.

With additional new features on the team selection page such as number of appearances, players game time and average player grade over the season it now provides greater information.

There is also a new “opposition category” field, where each club can customise the content for the options included in here.

The Match Hub is an essential tool for coaching and analysis staff to improve overall workflow and usability.  

Relative Age Effect Report

This new feature provides increased support to deal with this important aspect of player development. A new built-in report covering recruitment, retention and development of players within an Academy is now available. This highlights the number and percentage of players born in different quarters.

Squad Dashboard Tab

A new tabular view of the Squad Register highlights players’ medical status and fitness testing results. This allows users to easily compare players. 

Tokenisation Enhancements

Our Athlete Management Systems are currently available in Italian, Spanish and Russian. With options to translate into other languages can be discussed with our client management team. Further improvements to email templates for users are now complete to enhance usability.

For more information on the latest updates from The Sports Office or to arrange a demo, contact us now.