Optimising Player Development at Cheltenham Town Academy

Cheltenham Town Football Academy, who are based in the Midlands, UK, are one of many clients who utilise Dartfish to support their analysis at the club. Dartfish has been integrated into Cheltenham’s analysis department for several years and is an integral part of supporting the coaches and players development on the pitch.

The analysis department is managed by Head of Analysis, Cameron Moth who started as an intern at the club and has worked his way up through the academy. Cameron is supported by multiple interns that seek experience in the football analysis world, utilising the club’s strong partnership with surrounding Universities such as the University of Gloucestershire.

Below, Cameron spoke to us about his experiences as an analyst at the club and how Dartfish has aided his analysis for the academy.

Head of Analysis– Cameron Moth

As an analyst at Cheltenham, my role is to look after the analysis department who provide analysis for coaches and players aged U9-U18 scholarship level. To provide such analysis, utilising Dartfish has extremely helped us streamline our workflow and assist coaches with player development.

In the early weeks of using Dartfish during my internship, I found it easy to make sense of and get to grips with. Dartfish has been a valuable tool for not only for myself and the analysts at the club, but also the coaches and players throughout the academy to assist in the development of performances.

Structure of our analysis workflow

The main products we use in Dartfish is the Live S software and myDartfish Note. It is great as we have various options of collecting video and data depending on the set-up we are faced with during the game. As we have multiple analysts in the department, we utilise multiple licenses in Dartfish that are distributed out to the analysts but also to coaches. We encourage the coaches to use the app to tag key moments in the game which we can easily sync up to our tagged events, as this really helps us capture key areas of the game the coaches are looking to develop.

Having the app on our phone to tag the game in live, allows us to work closely with the coaches during the game, or if we are set up in the gantry, we can easily stream in a live source and tag using the software on our laptops. Both set ups allow for a bespoke tagging panel to be created which we can share amongst all coaches and athletes who have access to our Dartfish TV platform.

As an analyst, time is extremely precious with quick turnarounds, so having the ability to utilise an app on your device and have the smooth integration with the software has helped us massively.

Another use of the software is the ‘Edit’ workspace where we can add in tagged events during tagging or post-match to review in further detail. We use this section to highlight key areas of interest for opposition but also to collate key moments of an individual. Then, using the analysis recorder, the coach is able to give remote feedback which is saved as a presentation and shared via Dartfish TV channel ready for players to review.

Sharing video and data with coaches and players

Utilising the Dartfish TV channel has allowed us to collaborate with coaches and players to host our video, data and interactive reports daily. For our players, they are easily able to locate their age group folder and watch their own clips from the matches and for the coaches, they can easily filter through individual players, team KPIs and save these in their personal playlist ready for their weekly feedback meetings. Many of our coaches also use our player highlights to showcase Cheltenham Town DNA and best practice which can help future players who come through the academy, coaches and also new analysts to get the most out of the analysis by knowing what to look out for.

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We also spoke with Calum Wands, the Lead Youth Development Phase coach at Cheltenham about how he finds using Dartfish has helped his coaching career:

How do you use Dartfish in your role and how has it helped assist you as a coach in your career?

Dartfish is an analysis platform that I was introduced to when I joined CTFC back in 2020, and it’s been an integral part of the development both myself as a coach, but also for the players I work with. It’s given me the ability to be able to re watch games, code and clip certain actions within these games to aid numerous individual development objectives. It’s been a key part of how I can reflect on fixtures, and how I can tweak and refine certain technical and tactical moments of the game for the players in upcoming matches and training. Essentially, it helps bring the minute details of individual, units and the team to visual life.

What key features do you like, and feel is the most valuable?

Being able to create my own tags when re watching games has been vital when looking for individual actions of players, to which I can then add to their own personal highlights playlist with ease. This has helped with player feedback, and backing up ILP observations to both player and parent in 6-week review meetings. Having games clipped by the analyst also helps me collage statistics for the team and individual, which also helps frame conversations and support every player

How do you integrate Dartfish when meeting with players?

I frequently use Dartfish for players highlight playlists, to tee up review conversations, and also simply conduct clips meetings with individual players. I also use Dartfish regularly for team analysis meetings throughout the training week which often frames the theme of the training session, or to review a previous fixture. Finally, I utilise Dartfish for pre match meetings, in which clips will be shown of our best practice, as well as clips of opponents to help deliver our tactical game plan.

Dartfish have recently added some new features onto the TV channel that we will be utilising this upcoming season. The ability to collaborate playlists with other coaches and players and comment on key events on the playlists is a game changer for us. Also having the option to add my own event to my playlist to use for my own personal use is great. Its going to really streamline how we collate player clips ready for their weekly reviews.

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