Hockey: Video analysts give quality performance at matches

The analysts at the Champions Trophy this week. Photo / Steven McNicholl

They lurk high above the hockey turf, wielding video cameras and laptops.

But if it is supposed to be a covert operation, they fail miserably.

It's pretty easy to spot the performance analysts for the international teams competing at this week's Champion's Trophy in Auckland.

For any given game there can be up to 15-20 personnel from different teams crammed in to a makeshift box at one end of the ground, each with their recording devices handy.

Hockey is believed to be the most coded sport in the world, with video analysis a key part of the sport since the 1970s.

The very fact that organisers have scaffolding and containers to house the performance analysts illustrates the role it plays in the sport.

Hockey New Zealand's man in the box is Ian Hicks, who provides data and analysis for the men's and women's Black Sticks. It's a time-consuming job, during a tournament Hicks is often working 18-hour days, slicing and dicing video footage to provide the coaches with not only a profile of their upcoming opposition, but also detailed player analysis on the New Zealand team.

During the Black Sticks games Hicks is coding video and sending it directly to the coaching staff, so they can get a proper feel for what the opposition is doing.

Hicks said having good data available was vital to a team's success.

"There's a lot of emphasis on it in the sport now. If you didn't have it and everything else was pared away and two teams just went out and played, you'd still get a great game of hockey. But the reality is, with [the technology] being available it is critical because you get that little edge on your opposition with the more information you have," he said.

Hicks, an Australian, has worked with the New Zealand programme since 2009, when Hockey NZ made the decision to appoint its first fulltime performance analyst. It was a brave step at the time. The women's team had just had their funding cut after finishing 12th at the Beijing Olympics and there was little in the way of resources for the team.

But the national body decided that if it wanted to close the gap on the top nations in the world, it needed to invest in quality performance analysis.

It's an expensive business, not only does it need to employ the human resource, but the technology that goes alongside it - the software alone costs $30,000 for each licence, then there are the laptops, the cameras and the hard drives.

"It's a very expensive business so Hockey New Zealand should be applauded, because it's those little bits of ingredients that make it more professional and give the coaches the support they need," said Hicks.

Before joining the Black Sticks programme Hicks, a former professional photographer, worked with the Australian women's team for eight years, coming into the role right about the time the first sports coding software was being developed.

The programme was originally designed for hockey, it is now in its eighth version and used around the world in various sports including top-level rugby, English premier league soccer, and the NBA.