GPS tracking is ubiquitous in professional sport, but many AFLW players are uncomfortable with it
by Dr Paul Bowell, Ekaterina Pechenkina, Emma Sherry and Paul Scifleet, The Conversation
Image credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
The 2024 Australian Football League Women's (AFLW) season began last week, continuing the growth of a variety of sports that were once considered male-only.
This growth has led to more female athletes entering the structures of elite sport for the first time.
However, these environments are often geared towards men.
For example, AFLW football players are required to train and prepare like their AFL counterparts, which includes tracking their physical activity through digital performance monitoring.
This can be problematic because most female athletes are still semi-professional and have to balance their sporting commitment with their work or care responsibilities.
This prompted us to investigate how satisfied AFLW players are with digital performance tracking.
We found that many felt uncomfortable with some or many aspects of clubs' digital performance monitoring programs, which can negatively impact monitoring effectiveness and players.
Technology and elite sport
Digital performance monitoring, such as GPS tracking, is now widely used in most elite sports.
GPS tracking can be used to monitor the movements, speed, acceleration and effort of athletes during training and play.
Sports teams use this data to compare and contrast athlete performance while managing workload in hopes of preventing injuries.
GPS tracking is used to guide training plans, measure performance and provide medical information for the treatment or prevention of injuries.
In the AFLW, all players wear a GPS monitor during training sessions and matches.
This data is then shared within the team, with a sports scientist or coach often displaying the data in the locker room or sharing it through collaborative messaging groups.
The footballers' metrics are then often ranked from fastest to slowest distance or from most to fewest kilometers run.
This can create an atmosphere of extreme competition, which can be challenging for athletes new to elite sport.
In addition, the data is considered objective and unassailable. For example, no player will be given an asterisk if he worked a 12-hour shift before training, which affected his performance.
AFLW: Emerging history and semi-professionalism
The AFLW is the elite women's competition in Australian Rules Football.
The association was founded in 2017 with eight clubs and expanded to 18 teams in 2022.
Various female athletes play in the AFLW.
Most of them come from youth development programs. However, some are also top athletes from other sports, such as Ash Brazill from Fremantle, who represented Australia in netball.
Many teams and athletes use GPS technology as part of their sports science program.
Most AFLW footballers are considered semi-professional, meaning they must juggle work, study, caring or other commitments with their sporting career.
In 2023, the average salary of an AFLW footballer was approximately $60,000 per year, well below the Australian average income.
Therefore, most AFLW players have to continue training alongside football.
A further difficulty is that most AFLW football players are given short, six-month contracts and have few career prospects within the sport after their playing careers.
While AFLW clubs work closely with the men's program and players have access to similar elite facilities, they lack infrastructural support such as full-time access to coaches, their clubs, sports scientists or nutritionists.
Footballers are expected to perform like elite athletes, but face semi-professional conditions such as limited access, limited support and limited remuneration.
These conditions led us to question whether this impacted how AFLW footballers used and experienced digital performance monitoring and whether the fact that they are semi-professional athletes influenced their willingness to participate in digital performance monitoring and the data generated.
What our research revealed
We have found that many AFLW footballers find digital performance monitoring a complicated and confusing practice, reminding them that they are outsiders in the Australian Rules game.
A player's tracking data is affected by a number of factors, including personal circumstances such as care or work obligations, lack of sleep, menstruation and the fit of the wearable device – a particular concern as the devices are often designed for the male body type.
However, when the athlete reads this data, it is free of this subjectivity and presented objectively – “You just didn’t run fast enough” – which often has a negative impact on the athlete’s sporting experience.
This highlights the ongoing issues faced by female athletes entering emerging sporting environments such as the AFLW.
In short, players are expected to perform at levels equivalent to elite athletes, but their realities as semi-professional athletes are not taken into account.
A guide for teams
Our study has highlighted a crucial fact: semi-professional athletes’ engagement with digital performance monitoring is inherently subjective and complex.
Player-centric digital performance monitoring policies are critical.
We recommend that clubs focus on five key areas in this area:
- Communicating goals by promoting an open, two-way dialogue that allows athletes to receive and seek timely feedback.
- Provides a clear understanding of what is being tracked, why and how that data is or is not being used
- Performance monitoring should be proportionate and meet the needs of the club and the players.
- Transparent data sharing practices that take into account the subjective factors unique to semi-professional athletes
- Improved wearability: Ensuring that all athletes have access to gender-appropriate wearables that fit different body shapes.
A player-centric framework can help AFLW clubs make the most of their significant investment in digital performance monitoring by giving every football player the best possible chance to reach their full physical potential.
More importantly, semi-professional female athletes are encouraged not only to participate in elite sporting competitions, but also to succeed in them.
Provided by The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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