Latest Sport Data Frontier

Earlier in the season, I blogged on how we could adapt the brain-training that saw Liverpool Football Club win England's first silverware of the year on offer.

Based around the ability to train players' brains in taking penalties [initial & update]. That work of German outfit Neuro11 saw 17 of 18 penalties scored taken across the two Final shootouts won since.

Now, an underlying approach to deducing when an injury is likely to occur before it does has been heralded as a game changer too. Zone7 the name of the analysts in this case.

Much being made of the AI element. The results so far speak loud and clear.

By two years back, 'they believed that their systems could detect 70 per cent of injuries up to seven days before they occurred'.

One headline on subsequent learning gains since, being that they'd slashed the number of lost days this season to injury by more than a third.

Last season they lost more than 1,500 days to injury, compared to merely 1,008 this.

And crucially, the days lost to what are deemed ‘substantial injuries’ (those lasting more than nine days), almost halved from 1,409 to 841.

Significant sounding numbers.

There's also the glimpse into the practicals. With heavy squad rotation deployed in the early games of the campaign to keep as many involved and fresh as possible without overloading individuals where able.

Here's a sign-off quote (cited by The Telegraph) of company founder, Tal Brown;

"[we are] a dashboard on the pilot’s cockpit but it is not the pilot. It is not magical software. It helps with some of the data heavy lifting but there’s a lot more that they see that the software does not - like players’ mood, their wellbeing, the tactical needs of the day. Ultimately it is human experts who are driving the show. It’s the human touch that makes that data useful and usable.”

A refreshing reminder not to follow data for data's sake.

With ramifications for us through the word of our times, the algorithm.

We undoubtedly have patterns that can be recognised too.

For a footballer's game-load, level of training and knocks taken, alongside stats on travel and sleep, we also have numbers that could reveal great insight when combined. Could these include such as suspects on the go, deal volumes, roles of those engaged, competitive pressure and meeting/dialogue types that affect our results?

The answers are out there somewhere. Hidden among the available puzzle-pieces which can be arranged for revealing assessment.