The significance of “data” in blues work

Four days before the match against Japan, a press conference was held on Wednesday in Marcoussi. The conference during which SAS France was presented. Among the pioneers of analytics, the latter has worked with XV in France for several years now.

The data that the Blues staff rely on a lot for group progression and giving specific information to the players as shown in particular by strikers coach Karim Ghazal.

“I’ve always liked it. For a long time, I’ve been working on touch origins, touch rhythms, lift speeds in alignment… When we played with the Blacks, I knew for example, thanks to the data, that their keys played ten seconds faster than the championship keys, so I had to teach the players a new way of working, reacting to the speed of the New Zealanders. […] Each team has its own specifics and the data also allows us to adapt to them in the best possible way. It’s also a way to impress the players, to give them something concrete and specific…”

The coach, Fabian Galthe, has also returned to his importance to rugby today.

With this data, we opened up the field of possibilities in opponent analysis by simply answering these two questions: “What did the teams that beat them do?” What did the teams that failed do? “All of this is very important to us.

We are able to judge the individual quality of a player. On the other hand, collective data matters in this game as the face of the field changes every 3 seconds. Were we ready defensively to respond to those three seconds, whether attacking or defending? Were men and order in place? But if you can get some form of agility, the ability to adapt to opponents, you can never predict the game scenario, as you watched it on Saturday, against the Springboks.

Numbers do not guide us. We run the numbers. Decisions are made with our intuition and knowledge. During a match, for example, you are not connected to any computer.