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 In modern day professional sport, the stakes are high, winning is everything and — as with any business — gaining an advantage over the competition, however small, can help bridge the all-important gap that separates success from failure.
Luckily for newly-promoted Barclays Premiership side Norwich City, when they take to the pitch at their Carrow Road ground they have Apple technology on their side — tracking their every move, analysing and enhancing the team’s performance, and helping the club’s backroom staff devise match tactics. In fact, you could say the Mac is their secret weapon. Part way through the 2002-2003 season, the club’s sports scientist Dave Carolan invested in SportsCode, a digital video analysis program that provides statistics and video footage relating to player and team performance during matches and training sessions. Installed on a 1GHz PowerBook G4 with DVD-burning SuperDrive, alongside Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, iMovie and iPhoto, Carolan has a state-of-the-art system which not only provides performance feedback, but also delivers high-quality video material for analytical, motivational and promotional use. “It was love at first sight”, declares Carolan. “The video and graphics capabilities of Macs are legend, but I’d never experienced it before. This solution was high power, easy to use and integrated with the PC environment of the rest of club”. The new technology came as a switch away from Norwich City’s previous PC-based analysis system and has revolutionised the club’s approach to using video.  Carolan captures footage from each game using a Canon XM1 video camera and a Miglia Director’s Cut DV converter. Superfast FireWire connectivity means that this footage is fed into the PowerBook in something close to real-time. As soon as the footage is ingested, SportsCode starts analysing the match action. The software enables Carolan to establish markers which register which player has the ball, when specific passes are made, when a corner is awarded and so on. Once the game is over he can correlate similar events and play back the footage to review team performance and offer tactical analysis. Unlike their previous system, the Mac-based solution enables Carolan and his fellow coaches to use both the statistical analysis and captured video footage immediately. “With some systems you have to wait two or three days to get the information you want”, he says. “That’s not acceptable in the world of football. We need it to be real-time. We can now use video feedback at half time or even during a game”.  Individual players also use the system to analyse their own performances. With games archived on an EZQuest 120GB FireWire Drive it is a simple matter to call up footage relating to one player, let them view the material, and even burn it to DVD for further analysis at home. Carolan uses iPhoto for training purposes, on one occasion providing detailed analysis of the position of the goalkeeper’s foot when taking kicks to improve technique. “We’re also using the system to build a database of training exercises and put those on the Web for the kids in our Academy”, explains Carolan.
Flexibility is key to the value of the system. With the PowerBook and Final Cut Pro or iMovie, Carolan can produce video footage quickly and efficiently for the club’s media requirements, allowing “Canaries World”, the club’s Web-based information centre, to collect match footage for the official Web site. Using SportsCode and QuickTime, Carolan can locate the footage, encode it for the Web and record it to camera directly from his PowerBook. And thanks to the QuickTime file format, he also has the confidence that he can move the footage between multiple applications and platforms quickly and easily, and without compromising quality. “Now, I get a lot more done in a lot less time”, says Carolan. “Previously, if a coach wanted a motivational video the following day I couldn’t do it. Now within two hours you can go from nothing to a five or six minute piece, set to music”. As for the effect on the performance of the Norwich City players, there is now no hiding place for them since every move can be recorded, played back and analysed. The system has fast become part and parcel of life at the club, with players dedicating time specifically to reviewing their own performance. But, notes Carolan with a grin: “Sometimes it’s amazing what the players will argue about. You show them what they did on full-screen video, you play it back again and again and they’ll still try and convince you it didn’t happen like that!” |
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