England follow F1 in their drive for glory

10 April 2012

Eight years ago Mike Tindall was part of an England squad Sir Clive Woodward ensured was the best prepared ever to leave these shores.

Woodward left no stone unturned in gathering a team of high-class specialist coaches and analysts, even inviting world darts champion Phil Taylor to work on hooker Phil Greening's line-out throwing skills. The attention to detail paid off, as Woodward's quest to steal a one per cent march on his rivals delivered the ultimate prize for Martin Johnson and his men.

It appears Johnson is determined to follow in his former coach's footsteps, as Tindall today revealed the RFU have been employing Formula One data analysis, allied to US military technology, to study player fitness and minimise the potential for injury.

Johnson has been putting his squad through their paces at Pennyhill Park over the past six weeks in preparation for the upcoming World Cup warm-up games, using data analysis from Formula One manufacturers McLaren to assess their performance.

With data generated by Global Positioning System harnesses and heart-rate monitors, the England coaches can pin point strengths and weaknesses and tailor training to perfection.

Tindall said: "If you think back to 2003, the greatest thing that Clive did was ensuring we were ahead of other people. Nowadays it's very hard. Everyone has caught up and is at the same level so you really are looking for that half a per cent.

"The physical and conditioning guys and everyone, working with McLaren and people like that, they are trying everything they can to get that little bit more data and feedback. If we can continue to do that, hopefully, we will steal those half per cents.

"They are looking at all the data that we pull up from the GPS and heart-rate monitors trying to predict when people are in a zone to get injuries.

"They also see when people are working to an optimum level and making sure they don't go over the edge of that. That helps minimises injury. Basically what they are doing is looking at all the data we are giving them, loads of numbers about how much mileage we are doing a week. If anyone gets injured, they play around with the statistics so they can try to find a model that can prevent it [happening again]."

Woodward's team entered the 2003 World Cup as hot favourites having won 16 out of their last 17 Tests.

Johnson's current crop are nowhere near those levels in terms of experience and world-class performances, but still head into the warm-up games buoyed by this year's Six Nations success.

Compared to the shambolic preparations for the 2007 World Cup, which saw Tindall ruled out with a broken leg after completing the training camp, the vice-captain believes the current crop are in rude health.

"This time we've had some really good results through the Six Nations and in the autumn but every now and then we have had that kick up the bum when we've not performed," he said. "That's the side we need to reduce because in 2003 even when we played poorly we found that way to come out on top. We need to find that balance."

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