Performance Analysis Key to Success for Suntory Sungoliath Rugby

Learn how these five-time champions of Japan use technology tostreamline their performance analysis process to improve playerand team performance, both in training and at matches.

Suntory Sungoliath are a giant of professional rugby in Japan, with a long history of success in the Japanese Top League.

Suntory head coach Milton Haig has more than 20 years of international coaching experience, including stints with New Zealand Maori and Counties Manukau in his home country, and as head coach of an emerging Georgian national team at two World Cups, all before linking up with his current team in Japan.

He has a simple but clear goal for his current side: “Perform well and end up winning the championship.” The head coach is also adamant that the way they analyze their performances is crucial to their chances to succeed.

“In terms of how statistics and video analysis help us, it’s crucial—it’s a vital part of our operation,” said Haig. “Analysis is a vital part of whether we will be successful or not, and how we interpret the information, how we gather the information, and then how we translate that information to performance on the field are all key components.”

Suntory uses video analysis throughout their weekly routine, from daily training sessions through the live analysis on match day. This means that the role of the analyst is now extremely important in the modern era of professional rugby.

“If you get a good analyst, they can make my job as the head coach, but also other coaches’ jobs, so easy because of the detail that he can extract when he’s coding,” said Haig. “And because he’s looking at our footage all the time, he can see things that sometimes we don’t pick up. We’re lucky to have a world-class analyst with us.”

Jun Sudo is the head analyst for Suntory and uses Hudl Sportscode to code training sessions and matches, providing feedback to both the coaching and playing team. The speed of Hudl Sportscode and integration with other products, such as Hudl, streamlines a job that’s very technical in nature.

“I live code all training sessions and games for our club, and what you upload on Hudl.com for review is completely in sync with the files you create on Sportscode, so you have a seamless workflow,” said Sudo. “Now, the new version of Sportscode lets you upload the timeline itself, and then lets coaches download the materials quicker, which allows us to share information much faster than before.”

As a former professional player and now widely experienced coach, Haig has a strong grasp on the kind of information that’s advantageous in high-performance environments.

“Analysis is a foundation component to any kind of professional organization for rugby or sport in general,” said

Haig. “What coaches have to decide is how deep they go in terms of looking at the information that’s provided, because you only really want to get the information that you can understand. If I was a coach starting my career, I wouldn’t hesitate to use analysis tools, and certainly an analyst with the right equipment to be able to optimize performance.”

When you look at when games are won, it’s not just about the day they’re played—it’s the training from Monday to Thursday.

For Haig and his coaching staff, the week begins by formulating a strategy to tackle the next opponent on the Japanese Top League schedule.

“The first thing I do when I sit at my desk in the morning is look at our next opponent next week,” said Haig. “We look at their patterns of play, the style of how they play, the certain threats that they have in terms of their attack, and also at how they defend. This allows us to form a picture to then come up with a solution of how we are going to play the next opposition.”

Suntory use Hudl Sportscode to code a range of instances from training sessions, including around 20 different areas, that are then shared automatically with players and staff throughout the club for feedback and analysis purposes.

“First, we upload the codes we created on Hudl Sportscode to the Hudl online platform, then the players and staff can check them on whichever device they choose, anytime and anywhere they want,” said Sudo. “These codes are also in sync with the computers at the clubhouse which means the players can review their performances at any time. Even during practice, feedback can be delivered instantly, and that can help the players improve their skills directly.”

Rugby consists of several specific and unique areas of play, for example, the set piece areas of scrums, lineouts and restarts. These can be broken down effectively using codes taken from Hudl Sportscode.

“ In terms of how statistics and video analysis help us, it’s crucial —it’s a vital part of our operation.”

“I spend a lot of time looking at our stats, but among the most important would be our set piece quality,” said Haig. “How accurate we are from our scrums, lineouts, and kickoffs, how the opposition organize themselves, how we can counter their shape, and also how well we are carrying the ball across the gain line.”

Tackle completion is another key statistic for the Suntory team. “I’m a bit of a stickler for tackle completion,” said Haig. “It’s really important as, you can measure the winning or losing of a match against this metric. In a winning game, you’ll more often than not find you’re in around the late eighties to early nineties for tackle completion.”

To feed into analysis software, you first need footage, ideally high quality footage. Suntory have a live capture setup that links directly to Hudl Sportscode for the analyst to code live.

“For practice, we set up a live capture and use a drone,” said Sudo. “I need to give feedback as quick as possible, sometimes immediately. So I code a live video feed during

our practice. Later, I share a video package with the coaches and players.

“Video plays a pivotal role in looking at different parts of our game, at the areas that we’re doing really well, but also highlighting some of the things that we’re not doing so well,” said Haig. “Because you can slow things down frame by frame with video, it allows us to absolutely see detail quite clearly and to translate information into corrective performance at training, and then hopefully into high-performance once we get to game day.”

“If the players understand their role at any given minute within the game structure, that’s really important, and we can see that through video analysis. Helping players correct role performance, which then becomes team performance, is absolutely key to winning matches.”

“I’d say it’s all coming down to video analysis now,” said Sudo. “There’s not a day we don’t see or use the video footage. Video analysis is fundamental to what we do.”

26 Hudl Magazine September 2021Hudl Magazine September 2021

Providing elite users with market-leading practices for high performance workflowson key global trends in recruitment and performance analysis.

Hudl Sportscode is central to all of the live analysis efforts for Suntory during the match.

“I use Sportscode to share feedback and the live feed with the coaches,” said Sudo. “I also try to finish coding everything for the team during the game.

“So, as an analyst on match day, I focus on coding. I use Sportscode to share feedback and the live feed with the coaches. Sportscode is great for me as an analyst as it allows me to set my criteria freely and definitely because the analysis is always backed by video images.”

The head analyst will code a number of instances and feedback to the coach’s box, which allows Suntory’s coaching staff to analyze the game with data-backed insights during the match.

“I code set pieces, backs play and of course individual’s skills for our players,” said Sudo. “I will also code ball possession metrics and the opponent’s performance metrics in the same

way as ours, so we can see how they are playing and feed back those insights to our coaching team.”

Sudo spends the remaining available time during the match coding instances for post-match reporting, which is uploaded to Hudl so the players and coaches can view footage instantly after the game.

For Suntory’s head coach, it’s clear that video analysis is fully ingrained into the processes of professional rugby.

“In regard to video analysis, we would spend maybe 80% of our day looking at video, whether it’s our training, whether it’s opposition analysis, or whether it’s our games,” said Haig. “The ability to look in-depth at instances like running lines for players, tackle completion, ruck play, all sorts of things that we do as normal tasks during a rugby game. The analysis helps us pinpoint information that we can then give to the players to improve their performance or an overall team performance, which is absolutely vital.”