Zena Sport: Helping female goalkeepers stay protected

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Donna Johnson started Zena Sport with the aim of protecting women athletes in high-impact sports. With the help of her husband, former AFL footballer and Western Bulldogs captain Brad Johnson, Zena Sport is changing the way female athletes look at injury prevention.

Their Female Impact protection garment, known as the Zena Z1 performance vest, offers support and impact protection, while also giving compression for enhanced post-game recovery.

The impact vest isn’t visible under a jersey or shirt while being lightweight and breathable without restricting a player’s movement, weighing only 160 grams.

Donna came up with the idea after after she watched a local women’s AFL game, with plans to continue expanding the product line after their initial success.

“My wife Donna was at a local game with her best friend who had a couple of daughters playing, and one of them came off that game with a big knock to the breast,” Brad said.

“We thought is there anything to help these girls during that development phase of life? That’s how the conversation started with us, and we continued to explore it.”

After discovering there wasn’t a large body of research in the area of injuries specific to women’s athletes, Zena Sport conducted their own.

“We worked with Deakin University in that process, and there were a lot of things to tick off,” Brad Johnson said.

“We went through their Centre of Sports Research, and the vest has been validated to show it absorbs a high level of contact.”

The AFLW embraced the impact vests, and now Zena Sport is expanding into other sports.

“The last 18 months we’ve been going flat out, AFLW was our first port of call but Melissa Barbieri jumped onboard quickly and she loves wearing it in goal,” Donna said.

“Soccer is one sport that the vest has been well received, and the feedback has been great so we want to push it even further and harder through the soccer world.”

Melissa Barbieri, a former Matilda’s goalkeeper, had an early opportunity to test the vest out before launch.

“Once I tried it I felt that little more protected in collisions, and as a goalkeeper hitting the ground and the ball hitting your chest,” Barbieri said.

“I have some breast cancer in the family, so I wanted to protect myself as much as possible, so it was a welcome revelation.”

Barbieri, who played 86 times for Australia, values the product as perfect for women goalkeepers who need extra safety during games.

“First and foremost I feel it gives you compression, which is always good for recovery, but it also gives you an extra layer of protection from any hits you might have via the ground, opposition coming in or friendly fire,” she said.

“Certainly when you are in a one-on-one predicament in a game, coming out and spreading yourself with as much width as possible and not protecting yourself in the chest area, it’s perfect for feeling that little bit of extra protection.”

Brad Johnson is the Western Bulldogs’ all-time appearance holder in the AFL, and his own experiences in professional sports influenced the design of the vest.

“It was always wait until you are injured, and then protect it to return to play. In that regard, I wore a rib-guard in the final few years of playing, under my jumper without anyone knowing, and away I went,” he said.

“So from that I was keen to add that element to it which has become a really popular part of the vest.”

For Barbieri, the impact vest not only offers her safety and confidence on the field, but she also believes in the company behind the product.

“Supporting someone who is so passionate about female athletes is really great to see, and it’s a homegrown family company, so I want to get behind them as much as much as possible,” she said.

Zena Sport is providing women and girls the opportunity to play contact sport to their full potential while raising awareness about the need to protect themselves from injury.

You can visit the Zena Sport website for more information, or view the ZENA Z1 Impact Protection Vest.

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Global Institute of Sport brings AI-powered football analytics into the classroom

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Image Credits: Global Institute of Sport

Technology has for a long time shaped how football clubs analyse players, prepare for matches and make decisions, and that technology is now officially entering the classroom.

The Global Institute of Sport (GIS) has partnered with Impact Soccer to bring AI and computer vision-powered football analytics into its programs.

The partnership will give GIS students hands-on access to advanced analysis technology, and help students understand how artificial intelligence is changing the modern football industry.

Turning Match Footage Into Data

Football analysis has traditionally relied on coaches and analysts watching hours of video, but that process can now be sped up by artificial intelligence.

Impact Soccer uses computer vision and AI to analyse football footage, with its technology able to turn player actions and movements into structured data. The system can also analyse what happens away from the ball. It’s possible to connect YouTube content or upload your own, which Impact Soccer then analyses.

Preparing the Next Generation

Not every important action involves the ball. Players constantly move into space, create passing options and make runs that affect defenders, but these actions can be difficult to measure manually.

Impact Soccer’s technology aims to quantify this off-the-ball influence. Its Impact IQ platform analyses player positioning and movement to provide more information about their impact on the game.

For students, this creates new ways to study football. They can look beyond simple goals, assists and passes and explore how movement and positioning affect a team’s performance. This allows GIS students better access to information that ensures the coaches of tomorrow can make more informed decisions. The partnership is also beneficial for tomorrow’s administrators: sporting directors and scouts also able to gain a broader reading on players where they may or may not spend their club’s finances.

Adding the Next Layer

Football clubs continue to invest in data and technology. Computer vision can track players. GPS systems measure movement. Video analysis helps coaches study matches.

AI is now adding another layer. Students entering the industry will increasingly encounter these technologies in their daily work, and this prior experience during their education can help prepare them for that environment.

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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