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The Growing Role of Video Analysis in Women's Football with Bristol City WFC

25 May, 2022

3 Min Read

By Tony Sprangers

The growing professionalism of women’s football at club level has increased the need for teams to gain a competitive edge in competition. We visited the Robins High Performance Centre, the home of Bristol City WFC, to talk about how video analysis enhances their player development, opposition analysis and scouting processes.

The club boasts an effective player pathway with a Skills Centre and Regional Talent Club for girls aged six to 16, and a college programme for players aged 16-19 to train, play and study at SGS College.

“The aspirations at Bristol City women's Football Club is to be a progressive club, to develop players and play at the highest level - that's key to what we do here,” said Lauren Smith, Head Coach of Bristol WFC. “We want to develop players from a homegrown situation as well, so in and around the Bristol area.”

“So we use Hudl in the feedback sessions, where after a game where both myself and the other coaches will watch the game back and clip it, feed it into an analyst, then who brings it all together,” said Smith. “So what we’re doing is to be able to bring that to life in short snappy meetings, really.”

Feedback sessions using video analysis are a daily feature for players, coaches and analysis staff at Bristol City WFC.

For Bristol City WFC Lead Analyst Luke Morgan, the Hudl Pro Suite allows several time saving features to his daily work with the coaches and playing squad.

“So on a training day, we'll discuss our opposition plans and me and Lauren will discuss what we're going to be looking for in training for the team, both in and out of possession, then out on the pitch we’ll be putting the camera on the high pods that we have here, getting a feed down into the laptop using Sportscode Elite and then live coding as training goes on,” said Morgan.

“I’m looking for clips that apply to our game plan, what we’re doing well, what we’re doing not so well, as well as coding training itself and the drills that are going on throughout training.

Then post training we’ll come in, review the clips to be distributed to the coaches and then the Hudl integration will be used to upload training online for the players to see almost instantaneously.”

"Then post training we’ll come in, review the clips to be distributed to the coaches and then the Hudl integration will be used to upload training online for the players to see almost instantaneously" Luke Morgan - Lead Analyst, Bristol City WFC.

Ahead of this WSL2 season, Bristol needed a rebuild of the squad, with only a handful of players remaining from the past campaign. Being able to scout new players remotely using Wyscout has been a valuable tool to bring in players needed to build a quality squad. Upon returning to the club as coach this season, Smith made 11 new signings and brought seven academy talents into the first team group.

“Wyscout really helps us in terms of recruitment, especially when agents give us new names, players that we don't play against very often being able to search some of them, link the principles of our play up against what they're doing at their club that they're at the moment,” said Smith.

“For example, with center backs we can look at 1v1 duels, aerial duels, passes, progressive passes - we can clip up and look at those.”

Bristol City WFC can use Wyscout to scout and analyze the top women's teams in the UK. The Wyscout platform has access to over 900 competitions worldwide.

The Hudl League Exchange allows for the Bristol coaching staff to access and download match footage and performance data from any team across the WSL and WSL2. All video and data is transferable to Hudl Sportscode or shareable to any user on the Hudl.com platform.

“Video analysis within the women's game has become crucial recently as the game is growing in professionalism and standards,” said Morgan. “Hudl has been key to helping that with access of tactical footage for almost every professional football game with the Hudl League Exchange.

Hudl Sportscode is so crucial to what we do here at Bristol City Women's Football Club, It allows us to increase our levels of analysis to a level that perhaps other clubs aren't necessarily able to, particularly with the live features, with the integration, with the features, with Wyscout and how we can get data and other game information from there.

And everything is just very efficient and makes my job a lot easier.”

High-performance video and data on one connected platform - learn more about the Hudl Pro Suite.

With video and data coverage of over 900 competitions and 200,000 players worldwide, Wyscout is the platform for professionals working in the football world.