By Greg Bartlett

Football is a game where tensions can run extremely high. Did he catch that ball before it hit the ground? Was that referee making the right decision there? How many times have you actually stood up during a game and thrown your remote at the television screen? If only there was a way of accurately determining exactly where the ball was and the players were in relation to each other.

As far away as it is possible to be from a football field, orbiting the upper atmosphere about the planet are twenty to thirty satellites. These satellites continuously send signals down to Earth which are accurately time stamped to many hundredths of a second and give a very accurate positional signal. Passive receivers on Earth which can pick up these signals are able to accurately determine where they themselves are in real-time by comparing the signals from at least four of these satellites and triangulating their co-ordinates.

These types of technologies have greatly benefited both football team training and coaching. During games this technology is useful to assist referees in their decision-making. Recently a national team was having big problems with their players’ speeds. Can you believe these guys were actually running too fast? During the match, the players need to achieve a certain proportion of optimal running speeds and save the spurts of speed for the plays. These guys were throwing themselves around so fast that they were tired out in the first half. They were losing every single game!

The coach and the manager had had enough. They invested in some equipment with tiny GPS receivers. The gloves had little receivers and even the ball had a well padded receiver embedded inside. This is unlike cricket, where you can get away with a camera in the stumps. This fast-paced game needs accurate speed tracking. Their gloves can send a signal to a central monitor and player direction and speed can be determined as well as whether they have made contact with the ball.

It was invaluable for the team to see how much time they were wasting and how much energy they could save by slowing themselves down and thinking about what they should be doing to get into position. Well, after a couple of weeks of doing this that team has gone from strength to strength. Live GPS tracking technology at its sporting best!