Samuel J Robertson

Victoria University Melbourne | VU · Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living (ISEAL)

A high level of participant skill is influential in determining the outcome of many sports. Thus, tests assessing skill outcomes in sport are commonly used by coaches and researchers to estimate an athlete's ability level, to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions or for the purpose of talent identification. The objective of this systematic re...

Abstract The primary aim of this study was to develop and validate a golf-specific approach-iron test for use with elite and high-level amateur golfers. Elite (n=26) and high-level amateur (n=23) golfers were recruited for this study. The 'Approach-Iron Skill Test' requires players to hit a total of 27 shots. Specifically, three shots are hit at ea...

This study examined the appropriateness of self-report (predicted) data obtained from high-level golfers in tournament play. Twenty-one high-level golfers (mean ± s, handicap = +2.8 ± 1.8) completed one round of 18 holes. For approach-shots to the green on par 4 and 5 holes, three measurements were predicted by each player; a) Distance to Hole, b)...

Currently, there is a lack of appropriate skill assessments available for use in golf. The aim of this study was to examine the discriminative validity and the test-retest reliability of the newly developed "Nine-Ball Skills Test". Participants of two ability levels (elite, n = 14; high-level amateur, n = 16) each hit nine golf shots of differing c...

Though player drafts have commonly been utilised to equitably disperse amateur talent and avoid bidding wars, often they have also been accused of creating a monopsony labour market which restricts player movement. Within the Australian Football League (AFL) some have called for the increase of the initial draftee contract from two to three seasons...

This study analysed the extent to which player performance differs within the Australian Football League (AFL) with respect to the status of a player’s contract. AFL Player Ratings (AFLPR) and contract data were obtained during the 2013–2020 AFL seasons for all 827 players listed by an AFL club at the beginning of the 2020 season. A model of “expec...

Three-dimensional motion capture systems such as Vicon have been used to validate commercial electronic performance and tracking systems. However, three-dimensional motion capture cannot be used for large capture areas such as a full football pitch due to the need for many fragile cameras to be placed around the capture volume and a lack of suitabl...

Background The primary aim of this study was to determine the influence of task constraints, from an ecological perspective, on goal kicking performance in Australian football. The secondary aim was to compare the applicability of three analysis techniques; logistic regression, a rule induction approach and conditional inference trees to achieve th...

Return-to-sport (RTS) decisions are critical to clinical sports medicine and are often characterised by uncertainties, such as re-injury risk, time pressure induced by competition schedule and social stress from coaches, families and supporters. RTS decisions have implications not only for the health and performance of an athlete, but also the spor...

Evaluating practice design is an important component of supporting skill acquisition and improving team-sport performance. Constraint manipulations, including creating a numerical advantage or disadvantage during training, may be implemented by coaches to influence aspects of player or team behaviour. This study presents methods to evaluate the int...

Creativity is a difficult construct to define given its diverse interpretations rooted in various worldviews of behaviour. In this chapter, it is conceptualised as an embodied process, defined as an exceptional, adaptive motor solution that functionally achieves a task goal. To support the development of creativity, the notion of enskilment is revi...

Elite and semielite athletes commonly experience mental health concerns and disorders. Compared with men athletes, women athletes are at greater risk of a range of psychological stressors that contribute to health concerns and mental health disorders, which can impact their career satisfaction and longevity. In order to address and improve the ment...

An important consideration for sport practitioners is the design of training environments that facilitate skill learning. This study presented a method to determine individual (age, games played, height, mass, and position), environmental (activity type) and task (pressure and possession time) constraint interaction to evaluate player training beha...

With 36 players on the field, congestion in Australian football is an important consideration in identifying passing capacity, assessing fan enjoyment, and evaluating the effect of rule changes. However, no current method of objectively measuring congestion has been reported. This study developed two methods to measure congestion in Australian foot...

Duration is a key component in the design of training activities in sport which aim to enhance athlete skills and physical qualities. Training duration is often a balance between reaching skill development and physiological targets set by practitioners. This study aimed to exemplify change point time-series analyses to inform training activity dura...

Player movement metrics in football such as speed and distance are typically analysed as aggregates, sometimes outside of any specific tactical or match context. This research adds context to a player's movement over the course of a match by analysing movement profiles s and bringing together tools from the sport science and sports analytics litera...

Complex systems are open systems consisting of many components that can interact among themselves and the environment. New forms of behaviours and patterns often emerge as a result. There is a growing recognition that most sporting environments are complex adaptive systems. This acknowledgement extends to sports injury and is reflected in the indiv...

Purpose The aim this study was to provide an epidemiological injury analysis of the National Basketball Association, detailing aspects such as frequency rate, characteristics and impact on performance (missed games), including COVID-19 related and non-related injuries. Methods A retrospective study was conducted from the 2017–18 to 2020–2021 seaso...

Commonly classified as individual, task or environmental, constraints are boundaries which shape the emergence of functional movement solutions. In applied sport, an ongoing challenge is to improve the measurement, analysis and understanding of constraints to key stakeholders. Methodological considerations for furthering these pursuits should be ce...

There have been multiple calls made in the sport science literature for the promotion of interdisciplinarity to progress some of sports’ most prevailing challenges. Designing practice environments that support learning represents one such challenge, particularly given contemporary perspectives of skill acquisition and motor learning calls for coach...

Wearable resistance allows individualized loading for sport specific movements and can lead to specific strength adaptations benefiting the athlete. The objective was to determine biomechanical changes during running with lower limb light-weight wearable resistance. Fourteen participants (age: 28±4 years; height: 180±8 cm; body mass: 77±6 kg) wore...

This study presented a method of quantifying the manoeuvrability of two field-based team sport athletes and investigated its relationship with running velocity during competition. Across a season, 10 Hz Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) devices were worn during matches by 62 athletes (Australian Football League [AFL]; n = 36, 17 matches, Na...

Background Bayesian networks (BN) are directed acyclic graphs derived from empirical data that describe the dependency and probability structure. It may facilitate understanding of complex epidemiology by presenting the data in a multi-dimensional visual representation, and guiding inferences on the likelihood of the severity based on new informati...

The design of sports practice environments can be informed through data collected and analysed according to principles of the constraints-led approach. In this study, three manipulated environmental (area per player, number of players and team outnumber) and two task (activity objective and disposal limitations) constraints were measured during pro...

The primary aim of this study was to determine the relationship between a team numerical advantage during structured phases of play and match event outcomes in professional Australian football. The secondary aim was to quantify how players occupy different sub-areas of the playing field in match play, while accounting for match phase and ball locat...

The tournament preparation framework (TPF) provides evidence of the behaviours that experts (i.e., coaches, players, academics, high-performance staff) consider important for golfers preceding tournaments and before/after each round (i.e., tournament preparation). This study aimed to evaluate the convergent validity of the TPF-Self-Report (TPF-SR)...

This study developed a model to determine the extent to which player performance objectively differs between various Australian football (AF) leagues. Champion Data (CD) ranking points were obtained during the 2016–2019 seasons, for all players across the Australian Football League (AFL) and the 10 main second-tier AF leagues. Data pertaining to ea...

Periodization implies the systematic planning of training and competition with the goal of reaching the best possible performance in the most important competition. In team sports, this consists of finding a flight-and-practice schedule that maximizes the opportunities to perform the periodized contents (e.g., trips, practices, games, and days off)...

This is an exciting era for applied research in high-performance sporting environments. Specifically, there are growing calls for researchers to work with coaches to produce 'real-world' case examples that offer first-hand experiences into the application of theory. Whilst ecological dynamics has emerged as a guiding theoretical framework for learn...

Pressure is an important constraint on sports performance and is typically measured through manual notational analysis. A continuous representation of pressure, along with semi-automated measurement, would serve to improve the efficiency of practice design and analysis, as well as provide additional context to player competition performance. Using...

Background: From a sports perspective, pedagogical researchers have suggested questioning is an effective instructional tool and pedagogical strategy for developing critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills. Questions enable coaches to contextualise athlete learning by encouraging and guiding them to identify and explore solutio...

The utility of inertial measurement units (IMUs) for sporting skill and performance analysis during training and competition is advantageous for enhancing the objectivity of athlete monitoring. This study aimed to classify Australian Rules football (AF) kick types in an applied environment using ankle-mounted IMUs. IMUs and video capture of a contr...

Field-based sports require athletes to run sub-maximally over significant distances, often while contending with dynamic perturbations to preferred coordination patterns. The ability to adapt movement to maintain performance under such perturbations appears to be trainable through exposure to task variability, which encourages movement variability....

Representative learning design proposes that a training task should represent informational constraints present within a competitive environment. To assess the level of representativeness of a training task, the frequency and interaction of constraints should be measured. This study compared constraint interactions and their frequencies in training...

In sport, an "explosion" of information has meant that coaches may not have the time or cognitive resources to integrate it effectively into their decision-making. Research suggests that a disconnect exists between the information provided from the "sport scientist to coach", and subsequently between "coach to player". Further investigation is requ...

In sport, an "explosion" of information has meant that coaches may not have the time or cognitive resources to integrate it effectively into their decision-making. Research suggests that a disconnect exists between the information provided from the "sport scientist to coach", and subsequently between "coach to player". Further investigation is requ...

Goal-kicking is an important skill in Australian Football (AF). This study examined whether kinematic differences exist between accurate and inaccurate goal-kicks and determined the relationships between technical factors and accuracy. Eighteen elite to sub-elite AF players performed 15 x 30 m goal-kicks on an AF training ground, with three-dimensi...

Wayfinding is the process of embarking upon a purposeful, intentional, and self-regulated journey that takes an individual from an intended region in one landscape to another. This process is facilitated through an individual's capacity to utilise temporally structured, functional actions embedded within a particular environmental niche. Thus, indi...

Where do novel and innovative ideas in sport science come from? How do researchers and practitioners collectively explore the dynamic landscape of inquiry, problem, solution and application? How do they learn to skilfully navigate from current place and practice toward the next idea located beyond their current vantage point? These questions are no...

This study aimed to determine whether the role of technical, physical performance indicators and situational variables in determining match outcome has varied from a long-term analysis (seasons 2012 to 2017) of the Chinese Soccer Super League (CSL). The sample included 1,429 matches where 17 technical performance-related indicators, 11 physical per...

Contemporary models for athlete development and performance preparation in sport have advocated a role re-conceptualisation for coaches grounded as learning environment designers. Within this re-conceptualisation, expert practitioners are encouraged to draw upon their experiential knowledge to design representative and meaningful learning activitie...

A fundamental challenge for practitioners in high-level sporting environments concerns how to support athletes in adapting behaviours to solve emergent problems during competitive performance. Guided by an ecological dynamics framework, the design and integration of competitive performance preparation models that place athlete-environment interacti...

Decision making in sport involves forecasting and selecting choices from different options of action, care, or management. These processes are conditioned by the available information (sometimes limited, fallible, or excessive), the cognitive limitations of the decision-maker (heuristics and biases), the finite amount of available time to make the...

Resistance training is important to maintain an athlete´s health and regain strength after injury. Light-weight wearable resistance allows loading in the context of sport specific movements and can lead to specific strength adaptations benefiting the athlete. However, limited knowledge of the associated biomechanical changes with such a training mo...

Physical testing-based draft combines are undertaken across various sporting codes to inform talent selection. To determine the explanatory power of the Australian football league (AFL) draft combine, participants drafted between 1999–2016 (n = 1488) were assessed. Testing performance, draft selection order and playing position, AFL matches played,...

Sport, like many industries, is experiencing growth in resources, professionalism and data generation. An understanding of how humans can effectively and efficiently interact with technology, computers and other machines to improve sports performance is still being developed. As a consequence, the landscape in which the performance analyst now find...

Over two decades ago, Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) raised theoretical concerns associated with traditional, reductionist, mechanistic perspectives of movement coordination and skill acquisition for sport scientists interested in practical applications for training designs. These seminal papers advocated an emerging consciousness...

Understanding the interest of sports fans in professional tennis has valuable operational and marketing implications for tournament organisers, marketeers, player sponsors and the media. In sports, professional tennis in particular, the player effect on social media user engagement is still elusive. Using data from the 2019 Australian Open grand sl...

Haycraft, JAZ, Kovalchik, S, Pyne, DB, and Robertson, S. Classification of players across the Australian Rules football participation pathway based on physical characteristics. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000-000, 2020-This study investigated the utility of physical fitness and movement ability tests to differentiate and classify players into Austra...

The objective of this study was to incorporate contextual information into the modelling of player movements. This was achieved by combining the distributions of forthcoming passing contests that players committed to and those they did not. The resultant array measures the probability a player would commit to forthcoming contests in their vicinity....

Abstract Gastin, PB, Hunkin, SL, Fahrner, B, and Robertson, S. Deceleration, acceleration, and impacts are strong contributors to muscle damage in professional Australian football. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000–000, 2019—The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between serum creatine kinase [CK], an indirect marker of muscle...

This study explored longitudinal changes in contemporary mixed martial arts (MMA) combat within the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). A secondary aim was to investigate how bout duration influences the contribution of performance indicators on outcome. Data were acquired via the official analytics provider to the UFC (FightMetric). Male fights...

This study explored the fitting of player motion models in football using contextual player movement behaviours. Measurement of a team's spatial control using player motion models fit on average player displacements underestimates a player's ability to perform high effort displacements during moments of importance (such as winning the ball). We add...

Sport science’s accelerated uptake of technology and the resultant data growth has enabled new light to be shed on many of its most complex problems. However, this in turn has led to varying interpretation of these problems and often disagreement across sport science disciplines. This article proposes that revisiting the theory of bounded rationali...

Player evaluation plays a fundamental role in the decision-making processes of professional sporting organisations. In the Australian Football League, both subjective and objective evaluations of player match performance are commonplace. This study aimed to identify the extent to which performance indicators can explain subjective ratings of player...

Abstract Objectives To examine the effects of different protocols of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on VO2max improvements in healthy, overweight/obese and athletic adults, based on the classifications of work intervals, session volumes and training periods. Design Systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods PubMed, Scopus, Medline,...

The objective of this study was to incorporate contextual information into the modelling of player movements. This was achieved by combining the distributions of forthcoming passing contests that players committed to and those they did not. The resultant array measures the probability a player would commit to forthcoming contests in their vicinity....

Representative learning design is a key feature of the theory of ecological dynamics, conceptualising how task constraints can be manipulated in training designs to help athletes self-regulate during their interactions with information-rich performance environments. Implementation of analytical methodologies can support representative designs of pr...

The value of player decisions has typically been measured by changes in possession expectations, rather than relative to the value of a player's alternative options. This study presents a mathematical approach to the measurement of passing decisions of Australian Rules footballers that considers the risk and reward of passing options. A new method...

In netball, analysis of the movement of players and the ball across different court locations can provide information about trends otherwise hidden. This study aimed to develop a method to discover latent passing patterns in women’s netball. Data for both pass location and playing position were collected from centre passes during selected games in...

This study aimed to develop a model to objectively benchmark professional Australian Rules football (AF) player performance based on age, experience, positional role and both draft type and round in the Australian Football League (AFL). The secondary aims were to identify the stage of peak performance and specific breakpoints in AF player performan...

Ecological dynamics is a contemporary theory of skill acquisition, advocating the mutuality of the performer-environment system, with clear implications for the design of innovative training environments in elite sport. It contends that performance behaviours emerge, and are adapted, by athletes satisfying a confluence of constraints impacting on t...

Objectives: To evaluate the relationships between the athlete distribution of team performance indicators and quarter outcome in elite women's Australian Rules football matches. Design: Retrospective longitudinal cohort analysis. Methods: Thirteen performance indicators were obtained from 56 matches across the 2017 and 2018 Australian Football...

Working on-call with a night call resulted in a depressed (lower) cortisol awakening response (CAR) peak and post-awakening cortisol area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCG) the following day compared to when off-call. This may be due to exposure to noise, physical exertion, and stressful events during night callouts. There was no anticip...

Akin to other sports, professional tennis is urged to adopt a consumer-centred strategy and understand the influence of the star status of elite players on demand for its core product. Measuring the impact that tennis players have on demand for match attendance remains a key element towards achieving that goal. Using data from the Australian Open t...

This study investigated the influence of match phase and field position on collective team behaviour in Australian Rules football (AF). Data from professional male athletes (years 24.4 ± 3.7; cm 185.9 ± 7.1; kg 85.4 ± 7.1), were collected via 10 Hz global positioning system (GPS) during a competitive AFL match. Five spatiotemporal metrics (x-axis c...

In team-sport, physical and skilled output is often described via aggregate parameters including total distance and number of skilled involvements. However, the degree to which these output change throughout a team-sport match, as a function of time, is relatively unknown. This study aimed to identify and describe segments of physical and skilled o...