English FA and Leeds Beckett University announce innovative project with Playermaker

Staff Writer

After a successful two years working on a project that explores the demands of the women’s game, a partnership between Leeds Beckett University and the English FA has been extended for a third year. This will see further development and even more in-depth insights into the locomotor and technical demands of the game.

Playermaker, a world-leader in football performance tracking technology, is providing support for the initiative.

The research aims to better understand the demands on players within the women’s game, and what learnings can be taken from the insights obtained to drive the game forward.

The research programme instigated by the English FA includes a collaboration with Leeds Beckett University to appoint a PhD student and a Post-doctoral researcher. They are using insights gathered from the data to answer performance questions the FA gave, whilst offering data insights directly back to clubs involved in the project to inform their training strategies.

“Understanding the demands and developments within the women’s game is crucial to offering the relevant support to players as they seek to fulfil their full potential,” Project Lead Ryan King said.

“Our pioneering project looks to answer a key performance problem; How physically demanding is the game and how can we best develop and prepare players? Using the innovative Playermaker technology and the brilliant minds at Leeds Beckett we will be able to provide performance solutions that help maximise player potential and avoid load related injury issues – it is phenomenally exciting.”

As part of the project, players have been granted the opportunity to access and use the innovative Playermaker wearable technology in matches through the FIFA Innovation Programme. It will enable a wealth of data and insight to be captured on match characteristics and leveraged to better understand the demands of the women’s game and to inform training prescription.

Football boots with the Playermaker technology attached.

For the first year of the project, a number of Barclays FA Women’s Super League Senior teams, Academies and FA Women’s Championship clubs wore the Playermaker technology in training, offering world-first insight into how clubs train and prepare teams.

Following acceptance into the FIFA Innovation Programme, the second year of the project allowed clubs to use it in games, giving a unique perspective of the demands of elite women’s football and how we prepare and develop players to maximise their potential.

“This is a really exciting project to be working on with the FA and Playermaker. The acceptance of Playermaker into the FIFA Innovation Programme is a big milestone in the project as this allows us to better understand the physical demands of the game,” Dr Stacey Emmonds, a Reader in Sports Performance at Leeds Beckett University’s Carnegie School of Sport, said.

“As part of the research project, Leeds Beckett have developed interactive live training and match dashboards for each club in the project and an overall dashboard for the FA. These provide clubs with live analysis of their training and match data, and it also allows them to make comparisons to anonymised league averages.

“This enables the clubs to directly integrate the project research findings into daily training practices at the club and further develop evidence informed practice in women’s football.”

The project aims to better inform coaching staff, multi-disciplinary practitioners and athletes, who as a result will be able to make educated decisions about training priorities and managing injuries, and to better understand training load and match intensity.

This is coupled with the ongoing club-specific live data visualisation and feedback tools developed by Leeds Beckett on a raft of performance metrics against league averages. These provide live training insights which clubs can use to enhance physical development strategies.

Thanks to the work being conducted by the organisations, the resulting research programme and the participation of clubs; the data will help to innovate, support, and invest in the already phenomenal talent within the women’s game.

“We are thrilled that professional female footballers will now be able to use Playermaker technology in both game and training environments, as a result of the support and efforts of The FA, Leeds Beckett University and FIFA’s Innovation Programme,” Playermaker CEO and Co-Founder Guy Aharon said.

“The research that is being carried out is crucial to driving forward the women’s game, and we are proud to play a part in investing in and raising the bar for female football athletes overall.

“Beyond this, having the Playermaker wearable device approved for the first-time in professional matches is a huge milestone as our vision is for our technology to be available at all levels of the game, providing the ability for anyone who is passionate about the game to improve using our insights and data.”

Leeds Beckett University will be hosting a Football Exchange Research Conference on Saturday May 21, 2022 – where further insights from this research and similar projects in other professional football organisations will be shared.

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Active Club Program offers South Australian football clubs a funding boost

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Image Credits: Shutterstock 2327752993

South Australian football clubs can tap into another round of government support, with the Active Club Program offering grants of up to $3,000 to help clubs improve participation and strengthen their local communities. The Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing (ORSR) opened its new round of funding on the 28th of August. Clubs have until midday on Wednesday, 14 October 2026 to apply.

The grassroots benefits

The South Australian Government has allocated $1.448 million to the round. Clubs with fewer than 100 members can receive $1,500. Clubs with 100 or more members can receive $3,000. The program targets grassroots sport, including football. It helps clubs purchase equipment and resources that make participation easier and more affordable.

Football clubs can use the funding for sporting equipment, uniforms and protective gear. They can also fund playing venue maintenance equipment, professional development, medical equipment and training. The program also supports projects that improve inclusion. Clubs can use grants for positive health initiatives and hardship subsidies. These measures can help remove barriers that stop people from playing sport.

That focus creates opportunities for football clubs to support more women and girls. It can also help clubs create more welcoming environments for players of different ages and backgrounds. Water and energy efficiency also form part of the program. Clubs can fund eligible initiatives that reduce water use or improve energy efficiency. That could prove particularly valuable for football clubs managing local playing venues and facilities. The program also allows minor club infrastructure upgrades and technology that directly supports participation or club sustainability.

Who is eligible?

To qualify, a club must operate as a not-for-profit sport or active recreation organisation in South Australia. It must have at least 20 members and have operated for at least 12 months.

ORSR will also consider a club’s participation profile when assessing applications. The assessment looks at female and male junior and senior participation, alongside factors such as the club’s affiliation and when it last received Active Club Program funding.

How to apply

The funding can make a direct difference at grassroots level. In the previous round, 558 South Australian clubs shared more than $1.4 million. The government says the investment helped clubs meet essential costs while supporting participation and inclusion.

For football, that support can stretch beyond the playing field. Stronger clubs create more opportunities for players, coaches and volunteers. They also provide places where people can build connections and stay active. Applications for Round 56 will be screened in November, assessed in December, with clubs notified in January 2027.

To learn more about the South Australian Active Club Program, visit their website.

The Spreadsheet Is Dead: Majestri’s Fix for How Clubs Actually Assess Players

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If you’ve ever sat through a club’s end-of-season review, you’ll know the drill. A coach pulls out a folder of notes, someone half-remembers what a player was like back in Round 3 and a parent quietly wonders what they actually got for their rego fees beyond a team photo. Football club platform Majestri says it has a fix for that, and it’s built directly into its Player Assessment module.

Why clubs bother assessing players in the first place

According to Majestri, clubs run player assessments for one of three reasons – usually more than one at once. Some are chasing genuine development, using the data to lift the level across their high-performance squads. Others are after a fairer way to pick teams, putting every player on the same measurable scale so selection is based on evidence rather than a coach’s gut feel about who “looks the part.” And for clubs operating under a Football Australia or state federation licence, assessments at set intervals often aren’t optional – they’re a compliance requirement, with the paperwork to prove it when asked.

Whatever the motivation, Majestri’s pitch is the same: don’t let that assessment data die in a spreadsheet on someone’s laptop.

Build your own assessment, your way

There’s no one-size-fits-all template here. The Assessment Designer lets technical directors set their own criteria, sort them into whatever categories their coaching staff already use – think core skills, possession, defending, attacking – and decide what each point on the rating scale actually means. Crucially, every criterion also gets a comment field, because a bare number rarely tells the full story of a player’s development.

The Assessment Module Builder for an NPL Juniors assessment
The Assessment Module Builder, showing an NPL Juniors assessment with a 1-10 rating scale banded from under performing through to excelling and role-specific criteria grouped into core skills, possession, defending and attacking. Source: Majestri.

Build it once and it’s reusable every time that assessment cycle comes around, so every player and every coach – is working off the same yardstick.

Something for the parents to actually take home

One of the more relatable pain points Majestri is targeting: most families never see much tangible return from a season of fees beyond a team photo. Player Assessment addresses that with report cards – colour-coded against the same scale coaches used, grouped by category with averages calculated automatically, and delivered as a PDF or an interactive web page a parent can read without needing a coaching badge themselves.

A player report card for an under-15 player
A report card for an under-15 player, colour-coded from under performing to excelling, with a score for every criterion and a group average across core skills, possession, defending and attacking. Source: Majestri.

 

Turning the numbers into something useful

The real value, though, sits in what Majestri calls the Player Analysis Lab. This is where clubs can plot a player against their team-mates or an entire age group across two categories at once, spotting clusters and outliers at a glance. Every score gets read against the group average – so a “7” actually means something in context – and clubs can report at the broad category level or drill into individual fields underneath. The results can be filtered down and exported for selection meetings or grading purposes.

The Player Analysis Lab comparing players in an under-15 and under-16 squad
The Player Analysis Lab comparing seven players across under-15 and under-16 squads, with a scatter plot, a sortable table of scores against the player average, and controls for choosing which categories and fields to report on. Source: Majestri.

The admin side nobody enjoys, made easier

Beyond the flashy analytics, there’s a practical layer built for the volunteers actually running the process:

  • Sweep monitoring – a quick view of which assessments are done and which are still outstanding, organised into defined assessment periods so progress can be tracked against peers.
  • Individual development plans – every player gets a personalised plan, and clubs can group common improvement areas to run cross-team training sessions that lift the whole club rather than just one squad.
  • Access control – coaches and technical staff can only see assessments for the teams they’re responsible for, and completed assessments are only visible to people linked to that player’s registration.
“Hard numbers to draw on when you review coaching staff and curriculum – and something tangible for the players and parents who pay the fees.” – Majestri

 

The bigger picture

Majestri frames all of this as sitting on top of the club’s own data – assessment results live on each player’s profile inside the platform rather than in a spreadsheet that walks out the door when a technical director moves on. For committees, it also means hard numbers to lean on when reviewing coaching staff or curriculum, rather than relying on anecdote.

It’s a fairly clear read on where club administration software is heading: less about digitising paperwork for its own sake, and more about making the data clubs already collect actually work for player development, team selection and compliance  without adding to the workload of the volunteers who run the show.

For more information on Majestri’s Player Assessment module, visit majestri.com.au/player-assessment.

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