Application of a continuous pressure metric for Australian football

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 spatiotemporal data collected from wearable tracking devices, the present study applied Kernel Density Estimation to estimate the density of players, relative to the ball carrier, at point of skill execution during elite Australian Football training. Two environmental constraints were measured (area per player and number of players) to determine the relationship between these training design manipulations and density. Density was also compared with existing notational analysis measurements of pressure. Results indicated that a higher density on skills was associated with successful skill executions. The opposite relationship was found between notational analysis pressure measurement and skill effectiveness. A strong inverse relationship was found between environmental constraint manipulation and density, whereby increasing field size and playing number decreased the density on skill involvements. The findings offer insight into the continuous measurement of pressure and encourage practitioners to utilize training design manipulations to influence density as a constraint on skills.