Catapult, the sports technology firm, has announced a new deal with England’s Rugby Football Union (RFU), and the Premiership Rugby and Premiership Women’s Rugby (PWR) domestic competitions.
As the entities’ preferred provider of athlete monitoring technology, Catapult will make its full performance analysis suite available to the England men’s and women’s national teams, and Premiership Rugby and PWR teams.
The tools aim to help the RFU, Premiership Rugby, and PWR practitioners and coaches make informed choices on strategy, athlete performance, and injury management.
As part of the deal, Catapult’s ClearSky LPS will be installed in national team venues including the Allianz Stadium and England Rugby Performance Centre, in addition to a number of domestic training venues such as the Bristol Bears and Gloucester Rugby, providing low-latency, real-time data during training and matches.
Kieran Dannatt, vice president of strategic partnerships and development at Catapult, said: “This partnership ensures that the Rugby Football Union, Premiership Rugby, and Premiership Women’s Rugby teams have cutting-edge technology that enhances both team and individual athlete performance and player care.”
Duncan Locke, head of technical performance at the Rugby Football Union, added: “It has been a long-time objective to align player tracking technology across all areas of the professional game.
“The partnership between the Rugby Football Union, Premiership Rugby, Premiership Women’s Rugby and Catapult will provide players and practitioners access to a range of best in class products to optimize how players are managed and drive game-wide insights through standardized data capture and integrated data and video analysis.”
In June, Catapult also announced a new exclusive multi-year agreement with the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), the country's governing body for soccer.
Catapult is also partnered with the German Football Association (DFB).
Among the other teams around the world that use or have used Catapult’s technologies are all 32 franchises in American football’s NFL, various clubs in English soccer’s top-tier Premier League, some from Major League Rugby in the US, and England Netball.
