UTS and Sydney Swans Partnership

UTS and the Sydney Swans have a sports science partnership that's been going on for over 15 years now and what we try and do is embed UTS staff and research students with the expert staff at the Sydney Swans in order to create some real evidence-based outcomes which really tries to support the decision making around player availability and let's face it, we're trying to get the best players on the field on match day.

The swans have an amazing coaching staff and they work really well together collaboratively and I've been very lucky to have been a part of that and you can really see that the coaching staff is no longer really directing the players what to do. They are creating and shaping an environment in which the players can develop optimally. Research procedures can enhance specific match day analyses to do with practice design and how we can help that during the week and make it more similar to what is actually occurring on the weekend. Every game, every training session they do is monitored and when you start to look at the total work that they do you can start to look at how much work they need to do in terms of recovery but also planning sessions for optimisation of training.

The conditioning program is designed to help players be as fit and strong as possible it maximises the number of players that are available to the coaching staff. Come game day the players run out the game really well they're strong they're fit and they can do that for a full season. The research that some of our students undertake is able to provide some definitive data, about match running, about the intensities that they perform in training and also in matches and that enables us to really assist the decision making around recovery as well as trying to optimize training to make sure that we're supporting the best possible performance outcomes when we watch AFL on TV we often see the physical prowess of players but often we don't think about how skilful they need to be and in the end AFL is a very complex game. There's lots of players on field and they all need to make individual decisions that benefit the team and they all need to execute individual skills that also benefit the team. So it's incredibly complex and players have to be incredibly skilful just to be able to cope with the demands of playing this game.

We're really grateful for the support that we received from the Sydney Swans in order to continue this sports science partnership the whole staff in the football department across the strength and conditioning medical and performance analysis department and also the coaching staff are really appreciative of the work that UTS students do and we in turn really appreciate the ability to be involved and embedded and to have this evidence-based partnership to continue and for such a long time.

I’m Mark Wattsford I’m a researcher in the school of sport exercise and rehabilitation at UTS.

UTS and the Sydney Swans have a sports science partnership that's been going on for over 15 years now and what we try and do is embed UTS staff and research students with the expert staff at the Sydney Swans in order to create some real evidence-based outcomes which really tries to support the decision-making around player availability and let's face it we're trying to get the best players on the field on match day.

In terms of the UTS outcomes the UTS researchers and staff get to work with a really high-profile group of athletes. We get great data sets to do cutting-edge research and it's really enabling us to work at the pinnacle of Australian sport and that's really part of the UTS mantra is to be embedded in industry and to solve wicked problems that the industry have. It's quite difficult with the naked eye just to see how far a player runs or how much intensity they work with in training or a game so the research that some of our students undertake is able to provide some definitive data about match running, about the intensities that they perform in training and also in matches and that enables us to really assist the decision making around recovery. As well as trying to optimize training to make sure that we're supporting the best possible performance outcomes.

My name is Job Fransen. I'm an academic at the school of sport exercise and rehabilitation at UTS. For the past four years, I've been a skill acquisition specialist, and I've done roles where I've worked on the field with the players, trying to improve their skillfulness and the decision-making process.

And I've also been involved as a performance analyst where I've mainly done behind the screens work on how we can measure collective behaviour better. So how we can measure and the extent to which the team performs well together. And then the last year I've mainly been involved in helping to design practise to be as representative of a game as possible.

The age old saying is that you play as you train. Right. And training is the best preparation for playing games. We're kind of coming back from that because you can't just play games during training all the time. So, we might have practise sessions where we're working on the transition between defence and attack, and the coaches try to replicate as closely as possible what they actually do during a game.

The Swans have an amazing coaching staff and they work really well together collaboratively. And I've been very lucky to have been a part of that. And you can really see that the coaching staff is no longer really directing the players, what to do. They are creating and shaping an environment in which the players can develop optimally.

So I’m the conditioning coach the Sydney Swans here. My job is encompassed in sort of two different areas, i look after the conditioning program for the rehab players and I’m still involved in the sports science side of things, data analytics, plan monitoring.  Hopefully my job helps the swans on game day by maximising the number of players that are available to the coaching staff to select from and secondly the conditioning program is designed to help players be as fit and strong as possible and stay physically robust for the whole season.

My favourite part about the job is probably seeing the players succeed on game day. Winning in professional sport is, you know is really what it's all about, but then secondly to that um my my other favorite part is watching the staff sharing that success. All the staff work really hard to help the players prepare and then perform on game day and watching them sharing that success is a really nice part about the job as well.  So my job changes fairly significantly in the off-season compared to the in-season. During the off-season the majority of the players will have operations if they need it and so therefore the time period immediately allow immediately after that's really important and it differs in season. The time pressures are a little bit more significant um we've got to try to get players up the game and so therefore the decisions are much more acute. We've got to try to decide whether the player goes back to playing or not or does some more training in order to improve their fitness.

My name is Rhys Triblay and I’m a performance analyst at the Sydney Swans and I’m also a PHD student at UTS. So my role as a performance analyst changes from pre-season to in-season and initially my role in pre-season is largely to look at training and in particular training design and how the coaches are manipulating specific aspects of it like field length with the player numbers etc and then we have some some metrics that we look at in terms of how that collective behaviour emerges within training design and then in season it more transitions to what you would expect of match review opposition preview so looking at potentially what we will weak at on the weekend or what we did well what specific players contributed to certain metrics that we have as well and that we've developed and then also looking at that from opposition perspective so the upcoming team.what are they strong at how can we nullify their strengths and kind of augment how we play as well. I think swans fans would probably like to know that it's a large collaborative effort between all levels of the organization between head coaches the physical staff the physios doctors analysts etc and those relationships I think are quite crucial towards developing that specific culture as well that you want to have you.