.png)
Being With Scotland at the Small Countries Association Men’s Championships 2023
Introduction
Ally Jack, Head Coach of the Scotland Senior Men National Team, messaged me and asked if I would do some stats for the team at the Small Countries Association (SCA) Men’s Championships 2023 in Edinburgh. I was happy to do so. I get to experience another Championship and add another National Team to my CV.
I had a great time. I was really happy that the coaches used the stats and video analysis during the tournament. I like to think it’s what helped them get to the SCA Finals. In the Final itself, we did get really close (we were up 6 points in the second set) but Luxembourg was just too good. So we ended up with a silver medal – can’t argue with that. One highlight was when the team continued singing the National Anthem after the music finished. I didn’t know they were going to do it but I was filming luckily to capture it (see below).
It was also great to be back in Scotland. It’s a beautiful place, great banter and just hearing words like “pish” again. I had my fill of haggis too. I still don’t know what’s in it but it tastes good. The only thing I wish I could have done was quickly visit Stirling to see my old university.
So What Did I Learn?
Use a Tablet to Show the Stats The San Marino Scout had a printer and he would print the stats and bring it to the coaches between sets. I had this idea back in 2016 because I saw the coach and players would look at the stats from a printed version. I think it’s something about having a physical piece of paper that they would look at it. I never did anything with it because of the cost (buying a portable printer), weight/ space (carrying it in my backpack) and usefulness (you might only need it three/ four times a year). However, seeing the San Marino Scout did remind me of this idea. I quickly thought that rather than using a printer, I could use a tablet to show the stats to the coaches and players. I can post it on the coach’s WhatsApp group chat, which my tablet is linked to, and just bring it over to the coaches to view the stats. The downside is I recently cracked my tablet’s screen (see below) and I probably won’t get it fixed.
Coding Defence After a Spike, After a Free-Ball, Spike Cover and After a Block Touch When I first started to code digs, I went simple and coded all digs as the same. This means digs after an opposition spike, spike cover, after a block touch and after an opposition free ball/ overpass are coded the same. This is not ideal as the Dig In-Play % would be vastly different in each situation, e.g. the free-ball dig would be close to 100%. I could probably use filters to get that information but I wanted to improve my coding skills and code it live. When I tried it, it was so difficult. There was already a lot of time pressure to code everything and this seems to be too much. The only situation where I could consistently do it was after an opposition free ball/ overpass. That may be enough to separate free-ball digs from the other digs.
Using the Delayed Feed My webcam is broken and I didn’t use it for the 2022-23 season. I did reflect that I didn’t miss the delayed feed too much. However, I dusted off my old webcam and I found that I did miss it. It was helpful in a handful of situations where I could double-check actions and stat slightly more accurately.
Science Untangled Subscriber Apps Ben Raymond is the owner of the Science Untangled website (see link). I frequently use his Validation app as the final check of my data accuracy. Out of the blue, he sent me an email to ask if he could use my match videos and stats from the SCA tournament. I was happy to do so.
It was cool because Ben did spin up a leaderboard for the SCA tournament (see link). It was cool to see who got the most points, kills, aces, block kills etc, e.g. see below. It could do it myself but it would require a lot of work on my part. I was also pleased to hear that when they choose the Super Seven winners, i.e. the top seven players of the tournament, it was mainly based on the leaderboard/ my stats.
In return for giving out the video and stats, Ben said he would give me 12 months free subscription to his apps. I knew he has some other apps on his website but I always thought it was free since the validation app was free. However, it wasn’t all free. I haven’t fully explored it but the one that looks extremely useful is the video analysis app. This is where you can view clips of attempts that are filtered. It could be attack attempts by the opposing team’s main attacker or passing attempts/ first-ball attacks by rotation. This is the thing that coaches do ask for most.
So in the example below, I simply created a playlist of all attack attempts made by Luxembourg’s Zuidberg. Since the stats are timecoded to the match video, they are synced up to the YouTube videos. You can also share it with the team, even if they don’t have a subscription. Use this link below to see what I mean, but it is only usable for 30 days, so until 3 August 2023. The link does work best on a laptop/ computer rather than on a phone. It looks like there are a bunch of other filters you can use.
Final Thoughts
As I said in the introduction, it was a great experience. Hopefully, I can be involved with other things Scotland is involved in. I also can’t wait to explore the apps made by Science Untangled and see what can be done.
Below is just some photos I took during the tournament and underneath that is a YouTube playlist or every match of the SCA 2023.
Comments