Metapraxis, the financial analytics firm, has partnered with sports technology specialist Sportable Technologies to launch the first ever in-game scrum analytics technology.
The tech will be making its debut at this year鈥檚 Varsity rugby match.
The men鈥檚 and women鈥檚 matches between Oxford and Cambridge will take place at聽Twickenham Stadium on Thursday 7th December and will feature Sportable Technologies鈥� wearable sports technology.
Integrated into the players鈥� playing jerseys, the tech will capture both static and dynamic player data in real-time.
The technology has previously been trialled by select Premiership and Championship sides.
An earlier version was also used in last year鈥檚 fixture to record player data but this year has been scaled up to focus specifically on the key performance metrics of the players in the scrum, including the total force exerted for the men鈥檚 fixture.
The women鈥檚 match will include head-to-head player statistics.
During the match, Metapraxis will provide expert data visualisation to present in-game insight on the stadium鈥檚 digital screens at regular intervals during the match.
The statistics will be displayed before each scrum with a comparison to the previous one, to provide the fans with novel insight into the front row of the scrum.
The technology will also be used by both teams in pre-Varsity Match fixtures, to give the coaches real-time insights as to how their players are performing during the scrummage.
Simon Bittlestone, MD of Metapraxis, said: 鈥淥ur partnership with Sportable Technologies is an exciting opportunity to bring sport and data together in a previously unseen way.
鈥淏y sharing data from the heart of the scrum and bringing it to the big screen, we will help to illuminate parts of the game previously hidden from fans in the crowd.
鈥淟ike Sportable Technologies, we are passionate about telling stories through data and the Varsity match is a great opportunity for us to apply what we do for businesses to the world of sport.鈥�
Dugald Macdonald, founder and CEO of Sportable Technologies, said: 鈥淪port is increasingly becoming digitalised, with fans and coaches alike keen to analyse the game they love in ways that were previously impossible.
鈥淲e are proud to be involved in such an exciting industry and the Varsity Match is the perfect opportunity to give our tech its competitive debut.
鈥淢etapraxis is at the cutting edge of data visualisation and we look forward to working with them to bring the game to life for fans.鈥�