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for the Ulster team to keep improving and being
successful.
The software we, and all professional rugby
teams use is called ‘SportsCode’.
This software allows us edit our training and
matches very quickly. During a live match the
team stats such as lineouts and scrums are
coded. After the match the analysts work through
the night to generate all the individual codes.
In the morning the match is fully coded and the
information is sent to an app so that the
players can watch the game and check their
own personal contributions.
Q5. What would you say is the most
enjoyable aspect of your role and what
is the most challenging aspect?
The most challenging parts of the role are
mining through the mountain of data that we
create, attempting to find the important pieces
of information that will help us to be more
successful.
Without doubt the most satisfying aspect is
when I can see that a piece of high quality
analysis has identified a weakness in the
opposition which clearly helped the team to
win a match. In the past we have identified
specific opposition players that we can target.
A good example happened when we played
Montpellier in the European Cup in 2014. They
had a short right winger who was 5”10, so we
devised a play where we kicked the ball to his
wing and 6”5 Robbie Diack was hidden on the
touchline so he could contest the ball in the air.
Robbie caught the ball and scored the first try of
the match that we ended up winning 27-16!