Kevin Till

• PhD
• Professor at Leeds Beckett University

Objectives Contact with the head should be avoided during a rugby league tackle, given the inherent risks of head injuries. This study aimed to characterise a sample of tackles, retrospectively identified as resulting in a potential head injury by the Rugby Football League (RFL) match review panel. Design Retrospective video analysis study. Metho...

Using a two‐phase approach in the form of a rapid literature review and Delphi consensus, this study aimed to reach consensus on the terms, definitions and potential options to develop a framework that captures the contextual factors that can affect a rugby league ball carrier’s decision‐making, whilst also determining the perceived importance of t...

Purpose Head acceleration events (HAEs) are a growing concern in contact sports, prompting two rugby governing bodies to mandate instrumented mouthguards (iMGs). This has resulted in an influx of data imposing financial and time constraints. This study presents two computational methods that leverage a dataset of video-coded match events: cross-cor...

Purpose: Sports scholarship programmes are a common feature internationally for schools to attract and retain sporting student-athletes. Thus, it is important to understand how a sports scholarship programme supports holistic athlete development. The current study presents student-athlete perspectives of the talent development environment (TDE) and...

Talent identification of young soccer players is a significant consideration for elite youth soccer organisations, with decisions on players often being made based on the subjective expert opinion of scouts and coaches. Previous research has suggested that scouts and coaches purportedly consider a multitude of factors before arriving at their decis...

Humans are fascinated by the bipedal locomotor capacities at both ends of the athletic spectrum—sprinting speed and endurance. Some of the more popular field (eg, soccer, rugby, and lacrosse) and court (eg, basketball, tennis, and netball) sports utilize mixed energy systems requiring an interplay of both maximal sprinting speed (MSS) and maximal a...

Background Athlete exposure to contact could be a risk factor for injury. Governing bodies should provide guidelines preventing overexposure to contact. Objectives Describe the current contact load practices and perceptions of contact load requirements within men’s and women’s rugby league to allow the Rugby Football League (RFL) to develop contac...

Recognising and removing players with suspected sport-related concussions is crucial for community sports. Objectives Quantify rates and factors associated with non-reporting of concussion symptoms in community rugby league. Methods Overall, 484 community rugby league players aged ≥18 years and 965 parents of rugby league players aged <18 years c...

In the United Kingdom (UK), a degree in strength and conditioning (S&C) or an associated discipline is a common requirement for obtaining a professional S&C certification and employment as a S&C coach. However, limited research has comprehensively reviewed undergraduate and postgraduate S&C degrees in the UK, which this study aimed to do. A search...

As the popularity of strength and conditioning (S&C) continues to grow, there are now an increased number of S&C degrees offered in the United Kingdom (UK). These degrees can be recognised and accredited by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), the Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity in collabo...

Background Sport schools are popular environments for simultaneously delivering education and sport to young people. Previous research suggests sport school involvement to have impact (i.e. the positive/negative, intended/unintended and long/short-term outcomes, results and effects) on student athlete’s holistic (i.e. academic, athletic, psychosoci...

Important decisions surrounding talent identification (TID), talent development (TD) and (de)selection within elite youth soccer are often grounded in the subjective opinions of coaches. These opinions often stem from coaches’ observations of player performance, which have been shown to be susceptible to several biases. Additionally, previous resea...

Head acceleration events (HAEs) are acceleration responses of the head following external short-duration collisions. The potential risk of brain injury from a single high-magnitude HAE or repeated occurrences makes them a significant concern in sport. Instrumented mouthguards (iMGs) can approximate HAEs. The distinction between sensor acceleration...

Background Concussion is the most prevalent injury, and poor tackle technique has been identified as the most important and modifiable risk factor in women’s rugby league. Objective Phase 1: Report stakeholders perspective of tackler or ball-carrier responsibility for head-to-head contacts, and associated mitigating factors. Phase 2: Evaluate effe...

Background Rugby league is a contact sport, with a high rate of concussion, although limited research has evaluated the incidence of head acceleration events (HAEs) using instrumented mouthguards (iMGs). Previous research indicates that most HAEs are caused by tackles and ball-carries, although the proportion of these events resulting in HAEs is un...

Background Head contact is a risk factor for concussion and given the potential long-term health risks from repeated head acceleration events (HAEs), law modification trials as preventative strategies are required. Objective Part 1. Establish important and feasible law modifications to reduce high magnitude HAE and head contact. Part 2. Examine ef...

Background Non-reporting of sport related concussion (SRC) has been found in professional rugby league. Community rugby league (RL) has more participants, yet no data exists on non-reporting of SRC symptoms. The reporting of symptoms is fundamental for concussion diagnosis; thus non-reporting of concussive symptoms is a potential player welfare con...

Objectives Quantify concussion under-reporting and factors associated with concussion reporting in rugby league players. Design Cross-sectional online anonymised survey. Setting Rugby league in Europe. Participants 422 elite men’s and women’s players registered with the governing body. Interventions Independent variables: age, playing history,...

This study aimed to assess the impact of a psychosocial development program on academy soccer players with coaches being central design and delivery. The 8 Pillars program (designed to foster Communication, Control, Commitment, Confidence, Concentration, Resilience, Presence, and Self-awareness) was delivered through player workshops, coaching prac...

Background Physical development during adolescence is crucial for athletes in team sports, as it prepares them for the high sport demands at the senior level. While physical development in non-athletes are well-documented, a comprehensive understanding of adolescent athletes’ development, including the potential effects of team sports participation...

Introduction It is well-recognised that fulfilling the role of a coach is multi-faceted. In rugby, some of these coaching facets have been studied, however the research has not been reviewed. Reviewing the literature on rugby coaches will inform and guide policies, coach education, research and practice. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to p...

Assessing the holistic impact of student-athletes within sport schools is important due to the increasing popularity of sport school programmes, the likelihood that most youth athletes do not ultimately succeed in their sport and the multiple and wide ranging positive and negative impacts associated with intensified youth sport. Therefore, this stu...

In this short commentary, I provide considerations for whether genetic testing is a worthwhile investment within sporting talent identification and development systems based upon the recent paper by McAuley and colleagues. In summary, these reflections suggest that genetic testing may not be a good use of resource within talent identification and d...

The pathway towards senior professional status in sport is affected by a multitude of factors. An abductive examination of the talent identification and development processes at an English Premiership rugby union (RU) club was undertaken for the present study. Part one examined the perspectives on the selection and development processes of senior a...

This study compared the influence of match status (drawing, losing, or winning) and possession status (in-possession, out-of-possession, or ball-out-of-play) on the physical and technical characteristics of U14 and U16 elite youth female soccer match-play. Data were collected from 189 female academy players during 45 competitive matches, resulting...

This study aimed to (1) compare individual player match action characteristics between scholarship, academy, and senior (European Super League, ESL) levels of the rugby league player pathway, and (2) compare match actions between players that have progressed to play ESL and those that did not. Data was collected on 147 players from 95 senior, 69 ac...

Leg strength and multidirectional speed qualities have repeatedly been linked with increased performance during Rugby League (RL) match play and associated with career attainment. However, very little of this evidence for strength has been gained through unliteral measurements with no study available that has examined the impact of strength asymmet...

Background Motor competence is an integral component of the health and performance of youth. Numerous studies support the hypothesis that motor competence interacts with perceived motor competence and physical fitness during childhood to induce positive (e.g. healthy weight status) or negative (e.g. reduced physical activity engagement) trajectorie...

This presentation explored some underpinning concepts about how youth sport injuries may be both created and prevented, through more effective coaching session planning.

Research study exploring how coaches can manipulate session / task design during in-season gym based training sessions to impact athlete motivation and performance.

Research study exploring how changing session / task design and coaching behaviours can impact an athletes motivation and performance during an off-season training programme.

Background Understanding how technical and physical match-play characteristics may differ within and between matches is important for informing applied practices. Within youth football, understanding how situation-specific contextual factors, such as match status (drawing, losing, or winning) or possession status (in-possession (IP), out-of-possess...

Within the football codes, sprint performance is considered an important capacity for success and is therefore targeted as an area of athletic development programmes. However, the concurrent and complex nature of physical preparation for the football codes presents several challenges for effective sprint development. This thesis aimed to evaluate a...

Background With the increasing professionalisation of youth sports, training load monitoring is increasingly common in adolescent athletes. However, the research examining the relationship between training load and changes in physical qualities, injury, or illness in adolescent athletes is yet to be synthesised in a systematic review. Objective Th...

Intellectual Output 2 of Erasmus+ Project: ICOACHKIDS+

This study quantified and compared the collision and non-collision match characteristics across age categories (i.e. U12, U14, U16, U18, Senior) for both amateur and elite playing standards from Tier 1 rugby union nations (i.e. England, South Africa, New Zealand). Two-hundred and one male matches (5911 min ball-in-play) were coded using computerise...

Talent Development Environments (TDEs) aim to provide the appropriate conditions for youth athletes to realise their full sporting potential. How TDEs are designed and operated is therefore of great importance for the development of elite athletes. Stakeholders are vital in this process, yet their perspectives are poorly understood. This study asse...

Purpose: Despite the known health and wellbeing benefits of taking part in sport for children and adolescents, it is reported that sports participation declines during adolescence. The purpose of this study was to explore current organized youth sport participation rates across Europe for both males and females and update current understanding. Met...

This study aimed to investigate the consistency of attacking tactical and technical behaviour, and physical characteristics, over multiple bouts, and variability across days, of a specific rugby union forwards small-sided game (SSG). Data was collected from 21 professional rugby union forwards during four training sessions. The SSG, consisting of f...

In order to understand the features of sport schools and their impacts on the holistic development of student-athletes, it is important to take into account the voice of multiple stakeholders central to the programmes (student-athletes, coaches, teachers). Through a case-study approach, using five focus groups, with 19 student-athletes, and six sem...

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...

Physical education (PE) teachers and strength and conditioning (S&C) coaches are well placed to develop motor competence within youth populations. However, both groups’ perceptions of important motor competencies are relatively unknown, especially when considering stage of maturity. Therefore, this study aimed to 1) present PE teachers and S&C coac...

The importance of contributors that can result in negative player outcomes in sport and the feasibility and barriers to modifying these to optimise player health and well-being have yet to be established. Within rugby codes (rugby league, rugby union and rugby sevens), within male and female cohorts across playing levels (full-time senior, part-tim...

Male academy rugby league players are required to undertake field and resistance training to develop the technical, tactical and physical qualities important for success in the sport. However, limited research is available exploring the training load of academy rugby league players. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to quantify the field and...

Background To understand the multiple and wide-ranging impacts of intensified youth sport, the need for a holistic approach to athlete development has recently been advocated. Sports schools are an increasingly popular operationalisation of intensified youth sport, aiming to offer an optimal environment for holistic development by combining sport a...

Objectives Assess the validity and feasibility of current instrumented mouthguards (iMGs) and associated systems. Methods Phase I; four iMG systems (Biocore-Football Research Inc (FRI), HitIQ, ORB, Prevent) were compared against dummy headform laboratory criterion standards (25, 50, 75, 100 g ). Phase II; four iMG systems were evaluated for on-fie...

Background The evaluation of physical qualities in talent identification and development systems is vital and commonplace in supporting youth athletes towards elite sport. However, the complex and dynamic development of physical qualities in addition to temporal challenges associated with the research design, such as unstructured data collection an...

Motor competence (MC) refers to one’s ability to perform a variety of tasks, where outcomes are underpinned by movement quality, control, and coordination. Numerous studies support the hypothesis that MC interacts with perceived MC and physical fitness during childhood to induce positive (e.g., healthy weight status) or negative (e.g., reduced phys...

This review aimed to (1) systematically review the scientific literature evaluating the match-play characteristics of women’s soccer, (2) determine the methods adopted to quantify match-play characteristics of women’s soccer, and (3) present the physical, technical and tactical characteristics of women’s soccer match-play across age-groups, playing...

The possession of certain psychosocial characteristics can offer performance advantages in a range of domains. However, integrating a program to support the development of psychosocial characteristics is a lengthy process and involves context-specific knowledge and effective working relationships with stakeholders. The aim of this article is to pre...

Talent identification (TID) and talent development (TD) continue to receive significant investment from team sports organisations, highlighting their importance in attempting to identify potential elite athletes. Accompanying this continual pursuit to unearth future talent is an ever-increasing body of research aiming to provide solutions and strat...

This poster details an overview of a study conducted within the ICOACHKIDS+ Research Project. The study aimed to examine and compare the perceptions of athletes, parents and coaches within talent development environments in Europe, to established areas of TDE strengths/weakness and stakeholder similarity/difference. The work adds to knowledge on...

The measurement, analysis, and reporting of physical qualities within sport is vital for practitioners to support athlete development. However, several challenges exist to support this process (e.g., establishing comparative data, managing large data sets) within sport. This article presents 7 challenges associated with physical testing in sport an...

Despite the importance and complexity of developing sprint performance in football code athletes, there are limited studies exploring practitioners’ practices to improves Sprinting. Therefore, this study aimed to describe and evaluate the practices used with elite football code athletes to develop sprint performance. Ninety subjects completed a sur...

Objectives Determine the validity and feasibility of current Instrumented mouthguards (iMGs) and associated systems. Methods Phase 1; Four iMG systems (Football Research Inc [FRI], HitIQ, ORB, Prevent) were compared against dummy headform laboratory criterion standards (25, 50, 75, 100 g ). Phase 2; Four iMG systems were evaluated for on-field val...

Long-term athletic development practices have been recommended for the past two decades. However, limited research exists exploring the knowledge and skills required by practitioners to optimise long-term athletic development. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the knowledge, adherence, practices, and challenges of practitioners responsible fo...

(1) Background: The progression of youth rugby union (RU) players towards senior professional levels can be the result of various different constraints. The aim of this study was to examine characteristics that differentiated playing positions and player rankings in an English Premiership RU academy. (2) Methods: Thirty players (mean age = 18.5 ± 2...

Interpreting the physical qualities of youth athletes is complex due to the effects of growth, maturation and development. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of position, chronological age, relative age and maturation on the physical qualities of elite male academy rugby union players. 1,424 participants (n = 2,381 observations) from nine Rugb...

The purpose of this study was to present the physiological profile of male soccer players who compete in the professional (Division [D] 1, 2, 3) and semi-professional (D4) Greek soccer leagues, and to compare their physiological profile according to playing division. Using 1,095 players (age: 25.2 ± 4.7 years), twelve anthropometric and physiologic...

Given the importance of the environment in athlete development, recent years have seen an increase in research examining Talent Development Environments (TDEs). However, most research is limited to a single nation and the athletes’ perspective with little consideration of the views of parents or coaches. This study addresses these limitations by ex...

Proficient motor competence is important for the health and athleticism of all youths (Cattuzzo et al., 2016, Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 19, 123-129). Recent research indicates that strength and conditioning (S&C) coaches perceive it as important to develop a broad range of motor competencies within youths (Burton et al., in review,...

The Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS) is a popular measure of Athletic Identity (AI). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the factor structure (7-item single factor and 3 factor model; Social Identity, Exclusivity and Negative Affectivity) of the AIMS within youth academy soccer players. A total of 259 male youth academy so...

Long-term athlete development is a primary focus for the England Rugby Football Union (RFU). The purpose of this study was to explore the anthropometric, physical, and relative age characteristics of rugby union academy players based on age group and playing position. Seventy-eight participants were examined for height, body mass, 10 and 20 m sprin...

Context The assumed risks of early specialization in sport are well known, with several international consensus statements advising against specialization in early athlete development. However, there have been recent calls for more focused research in this area. Evidence Acquisition Research evidence from several scientific disciplines (eg, sport...

This study aimed to establish age-specific velocity thresholds for Under (U)14 and U16 elite youth female soccer players. Data was collected using 10Hz GPS units during 50 matches from 187 players (U14 n=89; U16 n=98). Spectral clustering identified velocity thresholds for high-speed running (HSR), very high-speed running (VHSR), and sprinting (SPR...

Background Within the football codes, medium-distance (i.e., > 20 m and ≤ 40 m) and long-distance (i.e., > 40 m) sprint performance and maximum velocity sprinting are important capacities for success. Despite this, no research has identified the most effective training methods for enhancing medium- to long-distance sprint outcomes. Objectives This...

There is global concern surrounding the current lifestyle behaviours and future health and well-being of youth (1). Levels of physical activity, aerobic and muscular fitness in youth are in decline (2) with such trends further worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic (3). Increases in obesity prevalence suggest that many youth do not develop the requisite...

There is an increasing awareness of the importance of the environment in academy players’ development, yet limited research has investigated players’ perceptions of their talent development environments (TDEs). This study focused on academy soccer players’ perceptions of their TDE and compared perceptions across the English soccer academy categoriz...

Instrumented mouthguards (iMGs) have the potential to quantify head acceleration exposures in sport. The Rugby Football League is looking to deploy iMGs to quantify head acceleration exposures as part of the Tackle and Contact Kinematics, Loads and Exposure (TaCKLE) project. iMGs and associated software platforms are novel, thus limited validation...

The relative age effect (RAE) is a phenomenon that represents how young athletes who are born early in the selection year are often overrepresented within youth sport settings. The contact nature of rugby union may further magnify the physiological advantages of those athletes who are chronologically older. Thus, the purpose of this study was to ex...

This mixed methods study aimed to assess the agreement between coaches ranking of youth rugby league players compared against objective physical performance data and gather coaches’ subjective descriptions of their players performance. Five hundred and eight male rugby league players (U16 n = 255, U18 n = 253) completed a fitness testing battery of...

Motor competency is integral to the long-term athletic development of youths. Strength and conditioning (S&C) coaches are recommended to deliver motor competency interventions, yet no studies have investigated their perceptions and practices for developing motor competency in youths. Sixty-seven male, and 4 female S&C coaches completed an initial a...

Purpose: To compare the physical qualities between academy and international youth rugby league (RL) players using principal component analysis. Methods: Six hundred fifty-four males (age = 16.7 [1.4] y; height = 178.4 [13.3] cm; body mass = 82.2 [14.5] kg) from 11 English RL academies participated in this study. Participants completed anthropom...