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Being With the England Team
tl:dr
I’m still learning as a Performance Analyst
England can definitely compete with other mid-level or lower-mid-level European countries – if only they had the funding
Introduction
I am currently the Performance Analyst for the England Senior Men’s National Team. I have never written an individual blog post on being with the team, only as part of a wider performance analysis reflection piece (see 2020 and 2023). I think it’s because I am only with the team for a short time so there is not much to say. In the recent trip to Luxembourg for the Novotel Cup, I did learn some new things that I want to reflect upon. So how did the tournament go and what did I learn?
Tournament ReportTournament ReportTournament Report
Novotel Cup | Champions | 3-0 win-Loss RecordThe Novotel Cup is a four-team round-robin tournament. What usually happens is we beat the other two teams in the tournament but we lose to Luxembourg to be placed second overall. This is what happened in the last two editions of the Novotel Cup (2020, 2023). This year was slightly different as we still beat the other two teams but we also beat Luxembourg to win the whole damn thing! It is the first time in the Novotel Cup’s history that England Men have won it (England Women have won it 7 times previously). Although it was nerve-wracking statting from the bench as Luxembourg did get close, the stats and set scores (25-17, 29-31, 25-17, 25-20) show it was a relatively comfortable win. I did think Austria U20 and France U18 would be standard wins. We did win but they did get close.
Reflection
Hudl vs VolleyMetricsThe England Team has access to Hudl and VolleyMetrics, two performance analysis platforms. The two are linked as I believe Hudl uses VolleyMetrics to get their stats. I might be wrong. I tried out both platforms to find out which one I should use so the players can access their stats and video. I found that VolleyMetrics has more detailed stats but it wasn’t linked to video, i.e. there’s no hyperlink to the player’s 10 kills as video clips if you click on it. It was also annoying I had to compress the match video to under 3GB before I could upload it. I thought Hudl was the better option since most players were already on the platform, via the Men’s Super League. The stats are linked to video so that was a big thing too.
Explaining What Volleyball Stats MeansInspired by my presentation on critical volleyball statistics, I wanted to do a similar presentation to the team as I knew we would have team meetings and access to a projector. The goal was to give a quick overview of the stats I do. I decided to break it down into three parts. The first was to quickly explain what the volleyball stats mean, i.e. the technical skills recorded and the performance indicators used to measure performance. The second part was to explain what stats they should actually look out for, i.e. why I look for point-scoring and attack stats. The third part was to explain my own match report that I would send to the players. I’m sure it’s a difficult read so I wanted to walk them through why I have specific stats in the report using the stats of the first match.
I do think that this is something I should do with all the teams I am involved in. I’m sure most players, if not all, have no idea what my match report means. This is something I can definitely do for the American School of London as I already hold weekly team meetings in classrooms.
Having a Small Effect On PerformanceIn the team meeting the day after the Luxembourg match, I quickly talked about the stats. I showed that our point-scoring (13.7% vs 4.3%) and hitting (38.5% vs 24.6%) were superior to Luxembourg’s and this was the reason for the relatively comfortable win (although nerve-wracking from the bench). I did talk about our service since we made 19 service errors in 103 attempts with 8 aces. I said it wasn’t the worst service performance, especially since Luxembourg made 25 service errors in 86 attempts with only 4 aces, but we can manage our service errors better. I talked about my time at IBB Polonia London and how I convinced them that jump serves aren’t effective. However, rather than abandoning jump serves altogether, the players should mix it up with float serves. I recounted how our best player, Seain Cook, would do 3 jump serves and then do a jump float in his service run. I was surprised that this convinced some players because a few of them proceeded to mix it up with float and jump serves in the next match later that day. So it was nice to have a small effect on performance.
Statting Dig Errors After A Block TouchIf there was a block touch after an opposition kill, if there was a big enough deflection I would normally code it as a tooled block (B/). If there was a tiny deflection, I would code it as a dig error (D=) without recording a block touch. My philosophy behind this is trying to determine who is more at fault for losing the rally. If the block touch had a big enough deflection, I would blame the blocker, even if the defender was still able to get a touch on it. If there was only a tiny deflection, I would blame the defender.
This caused an unforeseen issue because the Dig % After a Block Touch is always 100%. This is because I don’t code a dig error after a block touch as it gets coded as a tooled block. It was during the Novotel Cup that I decided I was going to code dig errors after a block touch. I would now code the block touch as a negative block (B-) and then a dig error after a block touch (D=B). I now can get a Dig % after a block touch, which is nice.
Taking Time to Visit Luxembourg ItselfI like to sightsee if I visit a new city if the schedule allows it. I did a bunch of sightseeing in Birmingham during the Commonwealth Games 2022. I could only spend an hour seeing a tiny part of Vienna in the early hours before breakfast during the ISSTs 2023. I still regret not visiting Stirling, where I did my undergraduate degree, when I was in Scotland for the Small Countries Association Men’s Championships.
I’ve been to Luxembourg twice before and I only spend an hour visiting the city itself. This time around, the schedule (I had two 6pm matches) meant I had a lot more time to explore the city. I had enough time that I booked myself in for a 2-hour walking tour! It was amazing to learn more about the city. Three amazing facts I learned are:
Luxembourg is about a quarter of its original size as it gifted it to neighbouring countries
The common flag I see (a Red Lion with a light blue and white background) isn’t actually Luxembourg’s national flag because you’re not allowed a coat of arms on a flag (or for a reason like that)
The city was heavily fortified as it kept being invaded. As a part of the agreement for its own sovereignty and being a neutral country (or some reason like that), it had to take down a lot of its fortifications but some still remain to this day
Tournament Stats
The tournament stats (download link below) showed we had a hitting % of 37.0%. This is so high. This tells me that we can definitely compete. Of course, not with the top European teams but with the mid-level/ lower-mid-level European teams. I think we can do well in the CEV Silver League and I think we can hang in the CEV Golden League.
Final Thoughts
It was amazing to win the Novotel Cup. It was a shame I had to fly straight after our last match so I missed the Cup presentation. Beating Luxembourg and the good stats tells me we can definitely compete with other mid-level/ lower-mid-level teams. I asked what would it take to take part in the European Championship qualifications and the answer was around £60,000 for the first qualifying round. If only we had that funding.
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