Astrophysics student brings best out of players

AN astrophysics PhD student and GAA player has told how he used Big Data to get his club promoted to senior level for the first time in its 135-year history.

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Eamon McGleenan, a member of O'Connells Tullysaran GAC in Armagh, created individualised training regimes and match tactics that eventually won the club the intermediate championship.

Eamon is part of the Predictive Sports Analytics team while studying for his PhD at Queen's University Belfast.

The PSA group have worked with soccer, rugby and GAA clubs in the past, but needed a new side for its latest project.

While the Queen's researchers were optimistic, they had no idea just how successful the project would be.

Eamon said: “Over a period of five months, our team at Queen's analysed over 550 million individual measurements from the squad using STATSports GPS hardware. It was a very detailed analysis, which included metrics linked to the speed of players, their accelerations, directional changes and heart rates. Our academic foundations are in astrophysics, so we applied mathematical models to the Big Data we obtained from the athletes. This allowed us to examine how the athletes evolved over time and we then provided key insights for the coaching staff, who then generated bespoke training routines and match tactics.