Ireland stats analyst Hammond is hoping to shine a light on rugby’s data revolution

EAGLE-EYED rugby watchers will know Vinny Hammond’s face. When the camera lingers on the Ireland coaching box during matches, the former St Mary’s College and UCD scrum-half is seated beside or below the main men, distilling a stream of information to help them make crucial decisions.

Over the next week, he hopes to give an insight into what actually happens in that pressure cooker environment by hosting a data analytics webinar.

Taking place tomorrow and next Thursday, he’s invited a star-studded line-up from a range of sports from Gaelic football to cricket to NFL and the Premier League to take part.

Hammond (right) has been working for the IRFU for 11 years and now heads up its Analytics and Innovation department, combining his passion for maths and love of rugby.

During his time, sport has gone through an analytics revolution and players, coaches, analysts and fans have never had more access to data to assess performance.

Some resent the move towards a more scientific approach, others embrace it heartily.

Hammond hopes to make it more accessible by bringing in leading names from on the pitch like the Dubs’ Jonny Cooper and Ireland’s Johnny Sexton, coaches Andy Farrell and Vinny Perth as well as leading analysts from Wolverhampton Wanderers, the England World Cup-winning cricket team, the Lions among others. All the while, he and his team are raising vital funds for Pieta House.

“We’ve tried to raise money for a charity that I’m very passionate about and then, at the same time, do something that that’s going to actually develop some knowledge,” he explains.

“I think people look at coaches’ boxes and all sorts of technology and think the game has lost its way.

“The truth is that it’s always less complicated than people think. There’s never been a case where we’ve been led down the river by a set of numbers, we always keep the human at the centre of any decision.

“The numbers and the analytics certainly make a piece of the puzzle, but they wouldn’t be the loudest voice in the room.

“We do a lot of number-crunching so that we know the six or seven metrics that are important.

“Actually half of my job is to get rid of all the other noise that isn’t important.”

He cites tackle stats as one example of a metric often given far more importance outside of the set-up than within it, saying: “There’s such little correlation between tackle stats and winning and losing a game – we’ve won games with really low tackle percentage.”

When people think of sports analytics they think of ‘Moneyball’, while Liverpool’s recent success

has made heroes of their numbercrunchers.

While Hammond says rugby cannot just take one model and apply it, he is keen to learn as much as possible from other sports.

“I’m obsessed with them with looking outside of rugby for innovation and for methodology,” he says.

“You don’t want to plug Moneyball straight into rugby. But there’s always aspects of each sport that you can go, ‘Okay, well, I can take that bit of that sport and see if it applies’.

“We have pushed loads of different things that we’ve learned from lots of different sports. We’ve spent a lot of time talking to pilots, aviation experts about their communication skills. There’s a really good global community of analysts.”

During lockdown, the analysis team has been working with Ireland’s coaches to help them understand the numbers better so that they are in a stronger position whenever rugby returns.

In the meantime, Hammond hopes to help broaden the church while raising funds for a good cause over the next week.

The IRFU’s Analytica 2020 webinar starts tomorrow and continues next Thursday. Proceeds go to Pieta House and tickets are available at: https://bit. ly/IRFUAnalytica2020