In this video, learn how Auckland United use the Hudl Focus Flex portable sports camera to fuel their goal of being the best amateur football club in the country.
Auckland United have a clear goal of becoming the best club in the amateur game within their home country of New Zealand.
Despite their amateur status, the club enters teams into New Zealand’s premier club competitions across men’s and women’s - providing a crucial pathway for players who want to develop their game and work towards pursuing professional opportunities.
In recent years, Auckland United’s women’s team have had several players move on to professional contracts, most notably 19-year-old Milly Clegg, who has gone on to represent the Football Ferns (New Zealand’s National Team) and now plays professionally in the USA for Racing Louisville FC of the NWSL.
The key challenge for amateur football clubs
Amateur clubs face unique challenges compared to their more well-resourced professional counterparts, but it’s not necessarily having less monetary resources that is the key challenge.
“The biggest challenge we face is definitely time," said Ben Bate, Auckland United Director of Football and Women’s Head Coach. “In the professional space, you're with the players seven days a week, whereas for us, we get a very limited window of opportunity for touch points with our players. The big challenge for us is how do we maximize that time and how do we create time outside of that where we can support the players also.”
The solution: Automating video capture with Hudl Focus Flex
One way to maximize time is to cut out manual processes. This season, Auckland United has started to use the Hudl Focus Flex portable sports video camera to automate the capture of their training sessions and games.
The Focus Flex camera uses AI tracking to follow the action automatically, capturing in HD quality without the need for a camera person to operate.
“Before we used the Hudl Focus Flex camera, previously we were using Handicams or other manual recording devices like iPads which weren’t practical,” explained Bate. “We now don’t need someone to operate our camera and we never miss a goal or a key instance, which is a common issue we previously had.”
How easy is it to set up the Hudl Focus Flex camera?
It takes only a few moments to set up this portable sports camera, an example of which you can see within the video feature at the top of the page. For the Auckland United staff, many of whom aren’t technology experts, the transition to Focus Flex has been seamless.
“The Hudl Focus Flex camera is incredibly easy to set up,” said Bate - who himself was a former Performance Analyst before graduating to professional coaching. “Compared to previous providers we've used, where there's been more level of complication, the Focus Flex camera is so simple. Even for people who've never used a camera before and haven't really been shown, it’s just one quick run through and they’re all over it.
Take it out of the bag, put it on top of the tripod, straight into the Focus App, start a new recording, a couple of seconds and boom, ready to play, ready to go.”
Setting up the Focus Flex camera takes only a few moments.
Multi-angle capture: Which camera angles does Hudl Focus Flex provide?
The Focus Flex camera provides both tactical and extra wide tactical angles, which can be switched between using the Focus App that controls the camera. This multi-angle capture helps the Auckland United coaching team to view the pitch from a range of perspectives, which enhances the way they can educate their players.
“One of the main factors that led to us bringing in Focus Flex is the multiple camera angles,” said Bate. “We have used other camera providers previously and the limited angles were quite difficult for us because we're doing a lot of player development work with our players around tactical principles of the team.
And that's not just encompassing the sort of 20, 30 yards around the ball. We're looking at the whole pitch. So to have those extra wide camera angles is massive for us, and to be able to isolate left and right camera on the left and right side of the pitch, is huge because now we can focus on what our goalkeeper is doing in the game as well as what our center forward is doing around the ball, and vice versa when we've got a goal kick - we can look at where our strikers are sitting and how they're affecting play.
The opposition goalkeeper, where are they situated? It’s all of these things that play into our mind when we're looking to develop game strategies to provide feedback to our players. So having those multiple camera angles and being able to flick through them, it's a massive game changer for us.”
The Focus Flex camera captures multiple angles of vision, which are crucial for review processes both in live and post-match situations.
Automatic capture, instant review: How Focus Flex is used to capture training and match footage
In addition to their Premier Men’s and Women’s teams, more than 20 teams from Auckland United’s thriving Academy setup take advantage of having a portable sports camera at the club to capture their training sessions.
“Aside from the fact it records automatically, the Hudl Focus Flex camera in training is really useful because it enables us to review footage immediately,” explained Bate. “Straight after the training session, we can jump on our Hudl online platform and as long as we've got an internet connection, it's uploaded and accessible straight away”.
The Focus Flex camera connects directly with Hudl - providing a fully integrated system of capture and review. This system has professionalized the Auckland United analysis workflow and saves hours of time during each day for their coaches.
“The main way the Hudl Focus Flex camera enables us to speed up our workflows is the near instantaneous upload,” said Bate. “Whether it's after a match, or after training, as soon as we press stop record on the camera, within two or three minutes, it's already on the Hudl platform, already up on the app.
So our players and coaches can access the footage straight away. By the time the girls have gotten changed after their session, we can jump onto Hudl and start to review the match or training session.
The time barrier is now removed. Even post-match, we're already talking to the players about things we've seen in games, whereas previously with other camera providers we have used, we would have to wait sometimes 24, 36, 48 hours, to access our footage.”
After a training session is complete, the footage from the Focus Flex camera can be viewed immediately on Hudl. Both on mobile and desktop platforms.
How Focus Flex drives player development
For Auckland United Premier Women’s player Kaley Ward, having the Focus Flex camera at the club this season has made the process of reviewing footage and taking feedback from coaches faster than ever before. Every player in the Premier Women’s setup has access to Hudl.
“The Hudl App, being able to have it on my mobile device has been absolutely brilliant, as I can access footage anytime, any place,” said Ward. “Once we get into the locker room after training or a game, we can look at the footage while it's still fresh in our minds.
We're able to interact collaboratively through commenting on the Hudl App which has been really beneficial to give and receive feedback to see how we're going with the game, how we're growing the areas that we need to improve and the aspects that we are already doing well in which has been really good for building player confidence player performance and further developing our game both as individuals and as a team.
Using the Hudl App, we can meet up with teammates at cafes, or can review footage before bed - it's super handy to use anywhere. Instead of scrolling through social media, you can look at your performance.”
After training is complete, footage captured on the Focus Flex camera is instantly available on Hudl for players to review their performance.
Reliable technical support: Hudl’s local and global support teams are ready to assist you
When you need technical support, we at Hudl have local employees to answer your call and a dedicated international Support Team to guide you through any issues you may have with your camera or software.
“In terms of the support that we have through Hudl, we've had numerous instances now where we've had minor technical issues and we've been able to get them resolved within minutes,” said Bate. “So in terms of getting someone on the phone, in terms of emails and responses, they are always very quick and timely.
With some of our previous camera providers, experiences with customer support it's been very difficult because we haven't had access to people locally in order to try and resolve those issues quickly.
Whereas with Hudl, there's local support, which is massive. We can get someone on the end of the phone really quickly. If it's across email, people are always willing to get back to us really quickly to help us resolve our issues.”
Hudl provides fast and timely customer support to teams in any location who need technical assistance with their hardware or software.
Conclusion: How Hudl Focus Flex is driving success for players and coaches at Auckland United
The overall performance goal of Auckland United is to become the best amateur club in the country by developing players and coaches to take their skills to the next level. In just one season with Focus Flex and Hudl, both players and coaches are seeing the benefits.
“In the modern game, so much is viewed online and so much is tracked online and using the Hudl App is indescribably beneficial because you're able to send that footage to maybe an agent or to teams overseas or to universities so that they can see like what the player is about rather than just how it used to be back in the day,” said Ward - who is an experienced player in the Premier Women’s Team. “It was a lot harder and took a lot more time to break down all that footage, you used to have to do it yourself and now with Hudl you can do it all on the app and it just saves a lot of time and makes our lives as athletes a lot easier because we can just focus a lot more on playing the game and getting better at the game.”
“In the modern game, technology is super important for our club to help amateur players reach the next level,” said Bate. “Having a professional level analysis system really helps the players in that progression to the next level.
What we're doing at the club is not too dissimilar from what is being done in professional environments. So whether our players progress into an international or professional environment, we're doing things of a very similar standard to help support them.”
