Qlik® (NASDAQ: QLIK), a leader in visual analytics, announced that the England Rugby League team is using QlikView® to analyze its player, match, and talent data to gain better insights into the way the team is playing and, ultimately, enhance their performance.
The England national team has a plethora of player match, training, GPS, and physiological data and statistics. Its performance division wanted to find a way to better analyze this information and give head coach Steve McNamara insights on how to get the best from the team. England therefore approached dedicated QlikView provider QlickIT, who suggested running the information through the visual analytics platform.
Initially, England built an app that could help them analyze data to inform its player selection for different games. The app has all of the players’ latest match and training metrics – anything from how far they travelled on the pitch to the number of tries scored/assisted, through to their average speed. These statistics are then matched up against available data on the opposing team’s skillsets and recent performances. It is then visualized in QlikView and presented back to McNamara so he can make more informed decisions about which players to pick – and the most effective training regimes to put them through to prepare them appropriately for the upcoming match.
Ultimately, we wanted to find a way to make better sense of all the match data and statistics we already had within the league, so we could see what was truly happening in regards to the England team’s performance,” says Jonathan Roberts, Director of Performance & Coaching, RFL. “We wanted to either be able to challenge misconceptions or use data-based evidence to prove to ourselves that certain team line-ups, training initiatives or tactics just simply weren’t working. With QlikView, we can pull all of our data together and the insights are there for us to use for future team development and make tactical changes to improve the way we are playing.”
The eventual aim will be for McNamara to use QlikView in real-time, so he is able to receive information at half-time about the first-half performance and make informed decisions on changes that could impact the course of the game.
QlikView is also being used to analyze data on young players that are coming through England’s development system, looking at their skillsets and performance data to see how they could fit into the international team in the future. Statistics are analysed against the data of successful international players to get an idea of which aspiring players look likely to be winners in the future.
The RFL’s use of Qlik to get better insights on the England team’s performance shows just how valuable proper use of data can be in in the Board room, or on the playing field,” said James Fisher, vice president of global product marketing at Qlik. “So many sports teams have reams of statistics at their disposal, and using an analysis platform to visualize data in the right way can give them a real advantage on the pitch. RFL is just one example of many who have been able to use Qlik to improve performance and give their sports teams and athletes a competitive edge.”
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