Job Fransen

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Verified

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Lecturer at Charles Sturt University

Talent identification and development (TID) in football can be enhanced through objective assessments of talent predictors. Yet, available instruments rarely consider the unique demands of goalkeepers (GKs). During early phases of talent development, considering a GK’s giftedness relating to, for example, different abilities (e.g. motor coordinatio...

This study aimed to examine the effect of visual pre‐cueing presented at different time intervals in the response time of dyslexic and non‐dyslexic children. Fifteen dyslexic and 15 non‐dyslexic children performed a computerised four‐choice reaction time task across four conditions: no pre‐cue and a 43‐ms time interval (or duration) of a centralise...

An evaluation of player behaviour and performance across different playing conditions in team sport is difficult. This study examined integrative (indegree and outdegree importance) and individual (goals, kicks, handballs, marks, tackles, kick and handball proficiency) level behaviours at one professional Australian Football club across three diffe...

In this opinion piece I reiterate the concepts of near and far transfer as previously described in the psychological literature. I show that despite very limited evidence, many technologies, tools and methods make questionable claims of eliciting far transfer from generic perceptual and/or cognitive training to sports performance. Specifically, thi...

Background: Deceleration is a fundamental component of multidirectional speed by which athletes reduce the velocity of their centre of mass to stop or execute changes of direction following acceleration or running at a constant velocity. Enhancing deceleration abilities is crucial for athletes as successfully executing horizontal deceleration has i...

This study aimed to explore the perceptual-cognitive characteristics of coaches as they assessed team performance in youth soccer. The primary focus was to investigate the alignment between coaches' subjective analyses of team behaviour and objective analyses, while also examining the relationship between coaches' gaze behaviour and their levels of...

Team invasion games are sports in which individual team members interact and exchange information to coordinate their behaviours and actions in pursuit of the common goal of winning matches. Researchers have used social network analysis to quantify the cooperative behaviours of sports teams (cooperative network analysis), yet this research exists a...

Decision-making is critical to team invasion game performance. As such, understanding how to measure and develop it is important to researchers and practitioners. However, due to the abundance of assessments available in this area, the optimal use of these assessments is still unclear. The current systematic scoping review summarises and examines t...

Soccer coaches are critical to academies as they are central to identifying players with the potential to succeed (i.e., talent). Research suggests coaches perceive skill as determining player's potential. Regardless, researchers only broadly explored their views and quantified player's skill using objective measures, which is problematic as coache...

The current study explored the association between talent pool size and relative age effects in Football Australia's talent pathway. It also compared relative age effects between male and female players. Participants were 54,207 youth football players (females: n = 12,527, age-range = 14.0-15.9; males: n = 41,680, age-range = 13.0-14.9) eligible fo...

This study aimed to investigate the test-retest reliability and discriminant validity of the Mobalytics Proving Ground™ assessment for League of Legends. Forty participants (age: 24.15 ± 3.68 y, sex: male = 31, female = 9) were a priori classified into two expertise groups: (1) esports players (age: 22.98 ± 3.64 y, sex: male = 18, female = 2), and...

Effective team behavior in high-performance environments such as in sport and the military requires individual team members to efficiently perceive the unfolding task events, predict the actions and action intents of the other team members, and plan and execute their own actions to simultaneously accomplish individual and collective goals. To enhan...

Despite advancements in the scale of data available for quantifying the physical and spatiotemporal characteristics of match play, few studies combine these aspects in professional sport. This study related these components to behaviours associated with successful outcomes across various phases of play. A retrospective cross-sectional design was ut...

Youth rugby players are often organised into (bi)annual-age groups to create equal competition and development opportunities for all players. However, the variability in kinanthropometry (i.e., the size, shape, proportion, composition and maturation) that exists between players of a similar chronological age can affect injury risk, physical perform...

Collective behaviour is an important component of team performance in team sports. This study used a binomial generalised linear mixed effects regression model to investigate the relationship between cooperative passing network characteristics and match outcomes of professional Australian Football League competition games across four seasons betwee...

Sport engagement, including tennis, and physical activity have been shown to have a positive influence on cognition in children. However, age has also been found to have a strong association with cognition in youth athletes. This study examines the threshold hypothesis by investigating the moderating role of age and maturation on the association be...

BACKGROUND: Perceptual-cognitive skill is a crucial component of expert performance in sport as expert athletes rely on the integration and processing of sensory information to execute complex actions. One of the topics of interest to skill acquisition researchers is therefore how the perceptual-cognitive system can be trained, and how that affects...

This study followed a longitudinal design to objectively monitor practice behaviors of professional and semi-professional esports players over a year. Publicly available data were collected from 30 male Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players (age: 23.76 ± 2.88y). Players were classified into two groups: professional (n = 18) or semi-professional...

Background Augmented feedback is often provided by coaches and practitioners as a method to enhance the performance of athletes and learners. When implementing a feedback intervention, it is important to assess the expertise of the learner and the complexity of the skill, to ensure an appropriate feedback modality, frequency, and timing is provided...

It is well-established that pre-cues, including those observed in an implicit manner, can affect motor skills and reaction times. However, little research currently exists on how pre-cues influence complex motor skills such as driving a car at high speed. This pilot study investigates the effect of implicit pre-cues on collision avoidance under a r...

Augmented feedback supplements or replaces task-intrinsic feedback and is common in team sports, however, no studies have reported on augmented feedback provision in professional Australian Football (AF) practice. This study investigated the effects of practice characteristics (feedback intervention frequency, practice time, practice type, season p...

Introduction: Rugby Union is a team-based activity, in which 15 individuals must perform cooperative movements and actions to coordinate effective attacking and defensive manoeuvres against an opposing team. Wearable Global Positioning Systems are often used to monitor the physical aspects of match play (e.g., distances and speeds of individual ath...

Purpose: To describe the physiological (resting core temperature, exercising heart rate, and sweat rate) and psychophysical (rating of perceived exertion, thermal sensation, and thermal comfort) responses to a short-term heat acclimatization (HA) training camp in elite female rugby sevens athletes. Methods: Nineteen professional female rugby sev...

Objectives Due to the nature of firefighting, most effective cooling interventions to reduce heat strain and optimise performance are not practically viable. This study quantified the effects of two practical cooling strategies, co-designed with subject-matter experts, on physiological strain and physical, perceptual, and visuo-motor performance du...

It is well-established that pre-cues, including those observed in an implicit manner, can affect motor skills and reaction times. However , little research currently exists on how pre-cues influence complex motor skills such as driving a car at high speed. This pilot study investigated the effect of implicit pre-cues on collision avoidance under a...

Despite awareness of the importance of quantifying technical, tactical, and physical characteristics of match play, few studies have examined the structural relationship of these aspects in professional sport. Accordingly, this study concurrently examined these components in relation to quarter outcome (n = 272) in Australian Football. The study fo...

There is limited research investigating objective practice monitoring in team sports. This observational study examined the practice activities used by eight professional coaches across 72 different practice sessions in one season within a professional Australian football team. This study aimed to evaluate the extent to which these practice types d...

Talent identification in youth soccer is a complex decision-making process that requires selectors to judge an individual’s future potential. While there has been considerable research into the performance characteristics of talented players, investigators have limited consensus on the best approach to assess soccer skills. Most of the research exp...

Match simulation in team sport should sample representative constraints and behaviours to those observed in competitive matches to enhance near skill transfer. This study compared task constraints (field length, field width, length per width ratio, space per player), time-standardised skill metrics (goals, shots on goal, handballs, kicks, marks, tu...

Objectives: Connectedness is a cooperative network measure that describes how well players in the team bi-directionally connect and how easily reachable they are to other players. It has been associated with an increased probability of winning competitive matches in professional Australian Football (AF), although applications towards training have...

This is an editorial for an upcoming issue of Science and Medicine in Football, critically evaluating the use of non-invasive estimations of somatic maturity such as maturity offset and predicted adult stature based estimations. It provides guidelines for researchers and practitioners who estimate somatic maturity in sport settings.

This study investigated cooperative passing interactions in elite rugby match play. Associations between team network metrics and match outcomes were also investigated. A cross-sectional approach was adopted, using data from four Australian Super Rugby teams, across five seasons. 44,178 passing actions were included across 321 team-fixture observat...

Issue Addressed Running since 1999, the Sanitarium Weet-Bix Kids TRYathlon (SWKT) is the world’s largest triathlon series for children and adolescents up to 16 years. This report seeks to describe participants of the TRYathlon and perceptions of the event. Methods An online survey was made available to Australian parents/guardians of participants...

Analysis of key performance indicators (KPIs) in team sports has frequently involved multiple univariate analyses and modelling of direct associations between each KPI and match outcomes. This study aimed to show a more appropriate framework and modelling process to establish causal plausibility for future confirmatory studies. A cross-sectional de...

Purpose: To determine the effect of wearing a phase-change cooling vest in elite female rugby sevens athletes during (1) a simulated match-day warm-up in hot conditions prior to a training session and (2) a prematch warm-up during a tournament in cool conditions. Methods: This study consisted of 2 randomized independent group designs (separated...

Despite advancements in the scale of data available for quantifying the physical and spatiotemporal characteristics of match play, there is an absence of research combining these aspects in professional sport. This study sought to differentiate between phases of play in professional Australian football using novel physical and spatiotemporal metric...

The widespread popularity of soccer across the globe has turned it into a multi-billion dollar industry. As a result, most professional clubs actively engage in talent identification and development programmes. Contemporary research has generally supported the use of executive functions - a class of neuropsychological processes responsible for cogn...

Introduction: This study sought to reduce the dimensionality of commonly reported spatiotemporal characteristics obtained from Australian Football games to facilitate their practical use and interpretability. Methods: A retrospective longitudinal design was utilised with team and individual spatiotemporal variables, measured via global navigatio...

Background: An expert/non-expert paradigm often helps understand the underpinnings of sports expertise; however, this method is scarcely extended to the complexities of collective behaviour in youth soccer. Aim: Therefore, the objectives of the current study are to investigate differences in the collective behaviour of youth soccer teams by expe...

Purpose: To determine whether elite female rugby sevens players are exposed to core temperatures (Tc) during training in the heat that replicate the temperate match demands previously reported and to investigate whether additional clothing worn during a hot training session meaningfully increases the heat load experienced. Methods: A randomized...

This study aimed to examine the influence of the quantity of practice and the in-game performance during practice of professional esports players over an eight-week period immediately prior to a major esports tournament. Data was collected from 43 male professional esports players (age: 23.52 ± 2.50 y). A range of measures were collected on a weekl...

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate how restricted visual feedback affects performance in a football-specific skills assessment that incorporates the coupling of football a-specific perceptual information with football-specific motor actions. Methods: The Footbonaut is a 14x14m cage equipped with 8 ball dispensers and 64 targets measuring pass...

Performance analysis is a well-established discipline in sports science, supported by decades of research. Comparatively, performance analysis in electronic sports (esports) is limited. Therefore, there is an opportunity to accelerate performance outcomes in esports by applying methods grounded in sports science. This study adopted a coach-centred...

Objectives To determine the relationship between injury incidence, player-salary cost and team performance in the professional Australian soccer league. Design Prospective observational cohort study. Methods Injury incidence, player-salary cost and team performance data were collected from the 10-club A-League competition (n = 27 matches/season)...

This study measured the influence of biological maturity across numerous performance parameters for talent identification in Australian football. Anthropometry, estimated maturity status using a maturity ratio from anthropometric measurements and chronological age, motor competence, physical fitness and small-sided match involvements of 227 U13-U15...

Introduction: Assessments of executive functions (EFs) with varying levels of perceptual information or action fidelity are common talent-diagnostic tools in soccer, yet their validity still has to be established. Therefore, a longitudinal development of EFs in high-level players to understand their relationship with increased exposure to training...

BACKGROUND: Several methods are used to induce mental fatigue; predominantly the modified Stroop task, which arguably has little relation to daily lifestyle tasks. AIM: To investigate the influence of the modified Stroop task on mental fatigue, boredom and motor response times. METHOD: 15 subjects (24.3±2.3 years) completed a 30-min modified Stroop...

Purpose: To provide a simplified, novel method for analysing the physical demands in an Australian Football context by reducing the dimensionality of commonly reported physical characteristics obtained from match play. This may facilitate their practical use and interpretability. Methods: A retrospective longitudinal design was utilised with indivi...

The current study aimed to investigate the performance characteristics that discriminate Australian youth soccer players according to their academy status. A total of 165 youth soccer players participated in this study and were sub-divided into either an early adolescence (n = 92, age = 13.0 ± 0.6 years) or mid-adolescence (n = 73 age = 14.8 ± 0.6...

Objectives: This study aimed to provide a simplified, novel method for analysing technical skill involvements in an Australian Football context by reducing the dimensionality of commonly reported skill counts obtained from Australian Football League (AFL) games. This may facilitate their practical use and interpretability. Design: Retrospective...

Introduction Executive functions are higher-level cognitive functions. Despite being relevant to many aspects of everyday life, it is contentious whether executive functions are important for high performing athletes. Executive functions increase throughout the career of an athlete, yet it remains unknown what are the main contributors. Therefore,...

Objectives: To investigate the association between motor competence (MC) and central obesity in preschool children. Methods: The sample comprised of 472 children aged 3 to 5 years (4.58 ± 0.70 years, 248 boys) from Recife, Brazil. MC was assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2. Waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) was calculated and a cutof...

Performance analysis is a well-established discipline in sports science, supported by decades of research. Comparatively, performance analysis in electronic sports (esports) is limited. Therefore, there is opportunity to accelerate performance outcomes in esports by applying methods grounded in sports science. The current study adopted a coach-cent...

Performance analysis in sports objectively captures aspects of athlete performances to inform coaching. Comparatively, esports is an emerging expertise domain with limited performance analysis research, however, no research has yet investigated the quality of available data. Therefore, this research aimed to: 1) assess the validity of publicly acce...

Background: Many activities require a complex interrelationship between a performer and stimuli available in the environment without explicit perception, but many aspects regarding developmental changes in the use of implicit cues remain unknown. Aim: To investigate the use of implicit visual precueing presented at different time intervals in child...

Background: When measuring executive functions (EF), it is common for athletes to be assessed on their ability to detect and process explicit sources of information. Yet not all of the information is perceived explicitly in an environment. Aim: This study aimed to include a new assessment that measures the impact of implicitly perceived congruent a...

Objectives: Reducing the dimensionality of commonly reported complex network characteristics obtained from Australian Football League (AFL) games to facilitate their practical use and interpretability. Design: Retrospective longitudinal design where individual players’ interactions, determined through the distribution and receipt of kicks and han...

The aim of the present study was to determine the factors affecting sports involvement in a school-based adolescent population. The cross-sectional cohort study assessed anthropometry, physical capacities and motor competence in 501 boys (aged 10–16 y), from junior (10–12 y) and senior (13–16 y) cohorts. Sports participation data was collected from...

Objectives: Little is known about the key performance characteristics of female players throughout adolescence, and how they compares to male players. The aim of this study was to compare performance assessments for male and female youth soccer players aged 9-18 years. Methods: Anthropometry, physical fitness, motor competence, dribbling performanc...

Identifying talented athletes from an early age to accelerate their development requires the investment of substantial resources. Due to the need for multifactorial approaches to talent identification, motor competence assessments are increasingly prevalent in contemporary testing batteries. Therefore, the aim of this review was to evaluate the li...

Purpose: To examine the independent influence of a range of situational factors on physical and technical match performance during international rugby sevens matches. Methods: Data was collected from 20 professional rugby sevens players from one team across one competitive season. Activity profiles were measured using wearable microtechnology devic...

Objectives: To examine the influence of maturation and its interaction with playing position upon physical match performances in U15 footballers from a national federation. Design: Observational study. Methods: 278 male outfield players competing in a national tournament were assessed for somatic maturity and match physical performances accord...

Research in football for a long time has focused on the physical nature of fatigue as opposed to its mental aspects. However, since 2016, six original articles have investigated the effects of induced mental fatigue in football on isolated physical, skill and decision-making performance tests, along with physical, technical and tactical performance...

For many decades, researchers have explored the true potential of human achievement. The expertise field has come a long way since the early works of de Groot (1965) and Chase and Simon (1973). Since then, this inquiry has expanded into the areas of music, science, technology, sport, academia, and art. Despite the vast amount of research to date, t...

Dynamic motor skills such as volleyball blocking rely on efficient perception–action coupling and are influenced by individual, environmental, and task constraints. However, limited research studies have assessed the effect of an individual constraint such as blocking skill on visual attention during an in-situ volleyball blocking task. Therefore,...

Objectives To investigate the construct and discriminant validity of a video-based decision-making assessment for talent identification in youth soccer. Design Observational study. Method A total of 328 academy youth soccer players (tier one, tier two, and tier three) from three developmental stages (late childhood, early adolescence, and mid-ado...

Objectives: This study aimed to assess the first instance and prevalence of the Relative Age Effect (RAE) in the male Australian Football (AF) talent development pathway through to the Australian Football League (AFL). Design: Retrospective cross-sectional analysis. Method: Birthdate distribution was accessed from an U10-U12 AF academy trial (n = 5...

Purpose: In sport, assessments are routinely administered to give an indication of performance. Assessing a skill requires external factors to dictate how and when the action is performed, highlighting the need for skill assessments to closely replicate the perception-action couplings experienced in football game play. Therefore, this study investi...

Purpose:: To examine the collective independent influence of a range of individual characteristics on physical and technical match performance during international rugby sevens matches. Methods:: Data was collected from 20 international rugby sevens players from one team across one season. Activity profiles were measured using wearable microtech...

Purpose: Monitoring athletic development in youth soccer can help sporting professionals monitor 10 athletic development and evaluate the effectiveness of training interventions. However, long-term follow up in talent development programmes in youth soccer is complicated. Therefore, the aim of this study was to forecast the developmental trajectori...

Talent identification and development in football is a complex, multifaceted process. Currently, most of the research in this domain is conducted in highly ranked, established football nations where the sport is immensely popular (e.g. Germany, Portugal, Belgium, etc.). Whilst these nation’s data are informative to some degree, there is little conc...

There is limited research in talent identification in youth Australian Football (AF), especially the factors that underpin selection into higher-level development programs. Therefore, this study explored age-related differences in high-level youth AF players and investigated characteristics influencing selection into a high-level development progra...

Introduction & Aims: Electronic sports (esports) involve players competing in video game competitions. Competition, peer pressure and skill building influence the time a player engages in practice. However, the contribution of practice activities for successful performance remains relatively unknown. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investig...

Introduction and Aims: Sporting organisations commonly adopt an early identification approach to select youth athletes that display potential to excel within a sport. However, this approach assumes a direct relationship between youth and senior performance. The present study aimed to examine the stability of youth soccer players’ anthropometry, mot...

The purpose of this review is to summarize the research that has examined the match demands of elite-level, men's rugby sevens, and provide enhanced understanding of the elements contributing to successful physical and technical performance. Forty-one studies were sourced from the electronic database of PubMed, Google Scholar and SPORTDiscus. From...

Objectives: To examine the factors influencing selection into playing levels and playing positions in a school-based soccer programme. Methods: Anthropometry, maturation, physical capacity, technical ability and motor competence were assessed in 216 soccer players (aged 10–16 years) who participated in a school-based soccer programme. Team coaches...

This study adopted an exploratory approach to investigate the use of small-sided games as a talent identification tool to determine youth soccer players’ skill proficiency. A total of 73 male youth soccer players (age = 13.3 ± 1.2 yr) were subdivided into two groups in accordance with their playing level (high-level: n = 36, low-level: n = 37). Wit...

The presentation describes the use of the Körperkoordinationstest für Kinder (KTK) in the talent identification and development process.

Electronic sports (esports) involve individuals or teams of players competing in video game competitions through human-computer interaction. The primary aim of my PhD is to understand the factors that underlie expertise in esports performance. The first question to answer is what makes professional esports players so skilled? Study 1 investigates t...

Introduction and Aims: There is an absence of talent identification research in youth Australian Football focusing on the factors underpinning selection into high-level development programs. This study explored the age-related differences in high-level youth Australian Football players and investigated characteristics influencing selection into a d...

This poster describes the performance characteristics of male and female youth soccer players.

This study adopted an exploratory approach to investigate the use of small-sided games as a talent identification tool to determine youth soccer players’ skill proficiency. A total of 73 male youth soccer players (age = 13.3 ± 1.2 yr) were subdivided into two groups in accordance with their playing level (high-level: n = 36, low-level: n = 37). Wit...

Objectives: To examine the factors affecting both physical and technical match activity in youth soccer. Methods: Activity profiles (physical) and skill involvements (technical) were collected from 160 players (aged 11–17 years) across one season in a recreational, school-based soccer program. Team coaches selected players into playing levels and p...