Virtual way to assist real play

A rugby-oriented female professor's pioneering use of virtual reality technology could change the perception of how players and coaches view action on the sports field.

Prof Cathy Craig, of Belfast, has developed the use of virtual reality technology to simulate how rugby defenders can improve their tackling technique when confronted by elusive side-steppers.

The technology, which incorporates computer simulations of real-time action on the playing pitch, has a wide range of applications in the world of sports science, she told an audience of about 85 people at a lecture in the Otago Museum's Hutton Theatre this week.

Prof Craig is one of the keynote speakers at the technologies in sport international research symposium at the University of Otago's School of Physical Education.

Prof Craig was among the first academics to incorporate computer simulation programmes and virtual reality experiments to test how players reacted to different sporting situations.

The inspiration for her research came when she watched Brazil defender Robertos Carlos score a free-kick goal past French keeper Fabien Barthez in 1997 in a game before the Football World Cup.

Carlos unleashed a 35m left-footed swerving thunderbolt to confound Barthez and score what pundits have since referred to as the "impossible" goal, which appeared to defy the laws of physics.

Her computer simulation programmes, which test how keepers can better follow the flight of a spinning soccer ball, were initially funded by adidas and have been used to help develop balls for different sporting codes.

The invitation to visit New Zealand for the sports symposium and present her research studies during the Rugby World Cup was too good an opportunity to turn down, Prof Craig said.

She started playing rugby in France, where she undertook a doctoral fellowship at the Marseilles sports science faculty, as part of her psychology studies.

Raised in Northern Ireland, Prof Craig started playing hockey and studied at the University of Edinburgh, where she gained a PhD in psychology.

A former first five-eighth, she went on to represent the Ulster province of Northern Ireland, and played rugby for about eight years.

After completing her Marseilles fellowship, she set up a virtual reality laboratory at Queen's University, in Belfast, to study how virtual reality technology could be incorporated into sports analysis and coaching techniques.

Her experience as a rugby fly-half had pushed her to develop a unique approach of incorporating virtual reality to provide coaching and sporting insights for players, she said.

"As a [first-five], I had that interest in decision-making and I wanted to try and communicate ideas from the training pitch through [virtual reality] simulation," she said.