Evaluation of cooperation between players in the rugby scrum using IMU

Abstract

Scrumming is an important set play in rugby football which frequently determines who wins the game. A pack of eight forwards (players) are required to coordinate their pushes, and timing, to exert pressure in the desired direction and so defeat the opposing pack. However, it has been difficult to objectively assess their cooperation due to technical limitations. We propose a convenient measurement method designed to evaluate the cooperation of players while scrumming by attaching compact inertial measurement units (IMUs) to the waists of the players. The acceleration and quaternions captured by the IMU allow us to calculate the acceleration vector and its peak time, and player posture. We found inter-trial changes in acceleration and posture between players during the scrums. Our proposed measurement system makes it easy to detect player coordination during joint actions in sports such as rugby.