About the Project
Enhancing the Profiling of Elite Men's Academy and Women's Super League Rugby League Players Through the Assessment of Force-Time Characteristics
Full-time
Funded (UK Fees and Stipend)
Start date: June 2023
Location: Leeds, UK
Funding note: The studentship has a bursary of £17,668 per annum (pro-rata into 12 monthly payments) plus UK Fees paid initially for a period of four years
The PhD studentship will receive a bursary of £17,668 per annum (pro-rata into 12 monthly payments) plus UK Fees paid initially for a period of four years. This PhD will commence in June 2023.
Leeds Beckett University, Hawkin Dynamics, Inc and the Rugby Football League are looking to recruit a highly motivated individual to join the research team at Leeds Beckett University to join an existing programme of research working with the Women’s Super League and Men’s Academies. The successful candidate will join a leading transdisciplinary team, involving academics, industry partners and a national governing body to deliver a research project that directly benefits the players, and the game. The successful candidate will also join the vibrant and collaborative Carnegie School of Sport and have access to world-class facilities and quality supervision.
Hawkin Dynamics is the industry partner. It currently serves 700+ customers worldwide in sporting, clinical, occupational, and tactical settings, including Stanley Cup, World Series, and NCAA Champions. The Hawkin Dynamics headquarters are in Maine, USA where all hardware is manufactured, and software developed. Hawkin Dynamics also has subsidiaries in Australia and Europe. Alongside the PhD studentship, the successful candidate will develop their applied skills by contributing to the sport science support services offered via the European office under the applied practitioner supervision of Dr Peter Mundy (Chief Scientific Officer, Hawkin Dynamics, Inc).
Within the Carnegie School of Sport, the Carnegie Applied Rugby Research (CARR) centre, led by Prof. Ben Jones and Prof. Kevin Till, undertakes high quality applied research with international and national governing bodies, and a range of professional sports teams. The CARR centre has over 60 researchers, working collaboratively to improve athlete welfare and performance. The quality of Carnegie School of Sport research is evident in the outstanding results achieved in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, where we ranked 2nd nationally when accounting for both research quality and the number of contributing staff (Sport and Exercise Sciences, Leisure and Tourism).
Project: Enhancing the Profiling of Elite Men’s Academy and Women’s Super League Rugby League Players Through the Assessment of Force-Time Characteristics
Research Team:
Dr Cameron Owen (Project Lead / Director of Studies; [Email Address Removed])
Dr Sean Scantlebury (Supervisor; [Email Address Removed])
Professor Ben Jones (Advisor; Leeds Beckett University)
Professor Kevin Till (Advisor; Leeds Beckett University)
Dr Peter Mundy (Advisor; Hawkin Dynamics)
Rugby league is an intermittent collision sport whereby players engage with high intensity attacking (i.e., sprinting and carries) and defensive (i.e., tackles) efforts followed by periods of lower intensity recovery. The development of physical qualities of rugby league players can be influenced by position, chronological and biological age. In addition to sharing collinearity, there is a complex and dynamic relationship between multiple factors and physical qualities that are currently not well understood. The extensive work assessing the physical qualities of rugby league players, to date (McCormack et al., 2022; Till et al., 2016; Till et al., 2017), only performs a superficial analysis of muscular strength and power focusing on the performance outcome of assessments rather than force-time characteristics that can provide greater detail into neuromuscular function (McMahon etal., 2017).
There is also greater need for quantifying the longitudinal development of physical qualities to understand how factors influence physical qualities and their change over time to support talent identification and long-term athlete development practices.
This project is being conducted as part of the Rugby Football Leagues physical profiling project across Academies and the Women’s Super League. The physical profiling project comprises of a comprehensive testing battery assessing the anthropometrics, body composition, muscular power, muscular strength, speed and aerobic fitness of players. The successful applicant will work collaboratively with the current research team, specialising in force plate assessments (countermovement jump and isometric mid-thigh pull). The aim of this project is to, therefore, integrate force-time characteristics collected from the force plate assessments into the physical profiling project to understand how the application of force relates to other physical qualities and their concurrent development.
The successful candidate should have excellent data management and analysis skills, with some knowledge of statistical analysis methods. An understanding of force plates assessments and analysis would be preferable; however, the successful candidate will be provided with full training from Hawkin Dynamics as part of their role providing sports science support to their European client base (1 day per week) enhancing their understanding and skills of working with force plates.
The candidates will be expected to be based in Leeds, working both independently and collaboratively as part of a broader research team and Hawkin Dynamics.
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Hear more about the project from Cameron Owen
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References
McCormack, S., Jones, B., Scantlebury, S., Collins, N., Owen, C. and Till, K., 2021.
Using principal component analysis to compare the physical qualities between academy and international youth rugby league players. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 16(12), pp.1880-1887.
McCormack, S., Jones, B., Scantlebury, S., Rotheram, D. and Till, K., 2020. “It’s important, but It’s not everything”: practitioners’ use, analysis and perceptions of fitness testing in academy rugby league. Sports, 8(9), p.130.
McCormack, S., Jones, B., Elliott, D., Rotheram, D. and Till, K., 2022. Coaches’ assessment of players physical performance: subjective and objective measures are needed when profiling players. European Journal of Sport Science, 22(8), pp.1177-1187.
McCormack, S., Jones, B. and Till, K., 2020.
Training practices of academy rugby league and their alignment to physical qualities deemed important for current and future performance. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 15(4), pp.512-525.
McMahon, J.J., Murphy, S., Rej, S.J. and Comfort, P., 2017. Countermovement jump phase characteristics of senior and academy rugby league players. International journal of sports physiology and performance, 12(6), pp.803-811.
Owen, C., Till, K., Phibbs, P., Read, D.J., Weakley, J., Atkinson, M., Cross, M., Kemp, S., Sawczuk, T., Stokes, K. and Williams, S., 2022.
A multidimensional approach to identifying the physical qualities of male English regional academy rugby union players; considerations of position, chronological age, relative age and maturation. European Journal of Sport Science, pp.1-11.
Owen, C., Till, K., Darrall-Jones, J. and Jones, B., 2022.
Statistical analysis considerations within longitudinal studies of physical qualities in youth athletes: A qualitative systematic methodological review. Plos one, 17(7), p.e0270336.
Scantlebury, S., Ramirez, C., Cummins, C., Stokes, K., Tee, J., Minahan, C., Emmonds, S., McCormack, S., Phillips, G. and Jones, B., 2022.
Injury risk factors and barriers to their mitigation for women playing rugby league: a Delphi study. Journal of sports sciences, 40(13), pp.1436-1449.
Scantlebury, S., McCormack, S., Sawczuk, T., Emmonds, S., Collins, N., Beech, J., Ramirez, C., Owen, C. and Jones, B., 2022.
The anthropometric and physical qualities of women’s rugby league Super League and international players; identifying differences in playing position and level. Plos one, 17(1), p.e0249803.
Till, K., Jones, B.L., Cobley, S., Morley, D., O'Hara, J., Chapman, C., Cooke, C. and Beggs, C.B., 2016.
Identifying talent in youth sport: a novel methodology using higher-dimensional analysis. PloS one, 11(5), p.e0155047.
Till, K., Collins, N., McCormack, S., Owen, C., Weaving, D. and Jones, B., 2022.
Challenges and solutions for physical testing in sport: the ProPQ (profiling physical qualities) tool. Strength & Conditioning Journal, pp.10-1519.
Till, K., Jones, B., Darrall-Jones, J., Emmonds, S. and Cooke, C., 2015. Longitudinal development of anthropometric and physical characteristics within academy rugby league players. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 29(6), pp.1713-1722.
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