Huawei and Canberra Raiders winning partnership

Huawei’s  Manager Corporate Relations and Programs, Lisa Connors hosted a media contingent to see how the Raiders are applying advanced sporting analytics to help team members achieve a high-performance status and avoid injury. But what we found is this multi-national company is going above and beyond to help the club achieve so much more.

Head coach Ricky Stuart, himself a prominent player in the 80s and 90s said that Huawei’s generous long-term support had affected the club in many more ways than just “signage at the grounds”. His own quest, the Ricky Stuart Foundation that he started to create awareness and understanding of autism is one of the unintended beneficiaries of Huawei’s support allowing him to leverage the club’s sponsorship via jersey sales, the front of jersey space, competitions and more.

Stuart said he used the enormous amount of data gathered to “give my gut feel a measurement. Tech does not change the art of football training but at the end of a day, it lets us give highly individual attention to each player and gives us better athletes. Data is always about the player welfare over performance.”

{loadposition ray}

When asked about how players react to the tech he said, “Younger, tech aware, players almost demand it and want more [like 24/7 smartwatch monitoring], seasoned players realise that the tech is about helping them to achieve more and the all-important injury prehab [preventative, not playing while injured], not rehab. But the real benefit to me is in saving time, the immediacy of the automated data collection and analysis, lets us know post-match and in that critical day or so after how a player is going.”

The Raiders use Kitman Labs systems to help capture and analyse things like hydration, sleep, diet, wellness, and for want of a better word tone. Tone is my term for their individual athlete optimisation system that uses Microsoft Kinect cameras and Huawei MateBook 12” Windows 10 tablets to give accurate biomechanical assessments so that footballers can establish a baseline of known good and it will identify any risks.

NRL Football Manager John Bonasera, Head of Athletic Performance Nigel Ashley-Jones, and Head Sports Trainer Grant Tozer showed media how its “high-performance athlete department” worked.

Ashley-Jones said that data has always been part of the team training but you collected it on slips of paper, put it into Excel spreadsheets and insights were not as evident as the software can provide.

On the field the team each wears a GPSports SPI HPU that gathers on-field GPS, speed, heart rate, and impacts over 10G transmitted via Huawei provided Wi-Fi to its MateBooks.

Tozer showed the status of each player, whether they were running as fast, and were as agile and in shape as their baseline indicated. “Using this GPSports system and Huawei Wi-Fi and MateBooks allows us to view data in real time and identify potential issues before they become one. The player granularity it provides is amazing and we can get a player fit and ready to go in half the time.”

Bonasera had a slightly different take on technology. “Mate there are 47 staff, 30 plus football team members, and umpteen other support staff. Let’s call it organised chaos!. Huawei’s support of [P9] handsets and use of things like Microsoft Office 365 and Outlook makes scheduling these boys so much easier. I can schedule or change meetings, provide up to the minute information on teams and players, communicate on a one-to-one or one-to-many basis and more. Not to play down things like fitness and injury prevention because they are integral to success, but a team needs to work as a well-oiled machine and Huawei has helped us to achieve that.”

In the gym, players use Teambuildr strength and conditioning software and Huawei MateBooks to track progress, update leaderboards, customise and control workouts, and above all collect stats without worrying about slips of paper.

Later we spoke to Media and Digital Manager Ben Pollack who has been a key driver of the club’s website, social media, and media presence. “Great content is about immediacy – that last tackle on Instagram, Facebook updates during the match, tweets, and so much more. I have three tools – my Huawei P9 that takes brilliant still and digital footage, it’s amazingly fast Cat 6 LTE on Telstra and a DJI Osmo Mobile handheld gimbal mount.”

“Huawei’s P9 help allows us to capture the moment and do it [social media/web content] all in-house using an almost broadcast standard, 2 x 12MP Leica dual lens camera,” he said. When asked about battery life he responded he had never run out on a match day.

I showed him the new Huawei Mate 9 that I had been reviewing – it has Cat 12 LTE (600/50Mbps) and a 12+20MP, OIS, dual lens Leica 2.0 camera … “Mate I must get one!”

Our host for the day, the ever affable Commercial & Marketing Manager Jason Mathie also gave us insights into the Huawei/Raiders relationship. “Huawei, pronounced Wah-Way, has been a sponsor since 2012 and the new three-year deal to the end of 2019 will see Huawei remain on the front of the Raiders jersey for a total of eight seasons.”

“The sponsorship has been more than a logo on the jersey. It has turned into a real partnership because Huawei wanted to help us in any way we could collectively think of. It is not just signage or player’s phones but things like supporting head coach Ricki Stuart’s foundation, by setting up Wi-Fi at our training grounds, and by looking how they can help in the analytics with equipment. We even have competitions where Huawei phones are the prizes for tries.”

In a corporate social responsibility sense, Huawei was drawn to the Raiders corporate values – courage, respect, integrity and professionalism that it instills in all its players, staff and supporters. It was a good match for Huawei’s own values.

Connors said, “We will support the Raiders in every possible way – from their charitable work with Tour De Cure, to their schools, and indigenous inclusion programs. No, it is much more than a sign on the jersey.”

While the ultimate aim is to leverage the Raiders brand to help make Huawei a household name in Australia, it is equally important for the Raiders to use Huawei’s presence to strengthen its brand.

Comment

I follow big data and analytics as a subject matter expertise area and its use in sports performance was a new area for me. My exposure to organisations like SAS (I will be attending its Global Forum next week) had given me a broad understanding of the use of big data and analytics.

The Raiders embarked on this path about eighteen months ago and its payback has been huge in terms of helping players to achieve their best and to ensure the best player welfare – if the analytics show off baseline performance then the player prehabs - not rehabs until they are right.

But as wonderful as the Raiders implementation was I could not help but see massive opportunity for the club to extend this technology even further via 24/7 monitoring using smart wearables (like Huawei’s smart watch), deep delving machine learning and artificial intelligence, and on the other side building loyal Raiders supporters with things like SAS’s Sports Analytics for fan marketing and membership.

Because as Mathie pointed out football is a business and everything takes money. Raiders have multiple revenue streams from running licenced clubs, property development, membership engagement, match ticket sales, merchandising and more – it takes a huge Raiders community to support the huge football machine from junior to NRL teams and to keep the community engagement program going.

“Huawei does not just provide money – it provides major support to the club and all its supporters. It truly is #Bleedgreen,” he said.