Today real‐time sports performance analysis is a crucial aspect of matches in many major sports. For example, in soccer and rugby, team analysts may annotate videos during the matches by tagging specific actions and events, which typically result in some summary statistics and a large spreadsheet of recorded actions and events. To a coach, the summary statistics (e.g., the percentage of ball possession) lacks sufficient details, while reading the spreadsheet is time‐consuming and making decisions based on the spreadsheet in real‐time is thereby impossible. In this paper, we present a visualization solution to the current problem in real‐time sports performance analysis. We adopt a glyph‐based visual design to enable coaching staff and analysts to visualize actions and events “at a glance”. We discuss the relative merits of metaphoric glyphs in comparison with other types of glyph designs in this particular application. We describe an algorithm for managing the glyph layout at different spatial scales in interactive visualization. We demonstrate the use of this technical approach through its application in rugby, for which we delivered the visualization software, MatchPad, on a tablet computer. The MatchPad was used by the Welsh Rugby Union during the Rugby World Cup 2011. It successfully helped coaching staff and team analysts to examine actions and events in detail whilst maintaining a clear overview of the match, and assisted in their decision making during the matches. It also allows coaches to convey crucial information back to the players in a visually‐engaging manner to help improve their performance.

Glyph-based visualization is an effective tool for depicting multivariate information. Since sorting is one of the most common analytical tasks performed on individual attributes of a multi-dimensional data set, this motivates the hypothesis that introducing glyph sorting would significantly enhance the usability of glyph-based visualization. In this paper, we present a glyph-based conceptual framework as part of a visualization process for interactive sorting of multivariate data. We examine several technical aspects of glyph sorting and provide design principles for developing effective, visually sortable glyphs. Glyphs that are visually sortable provide two key benefits: 1) performing comparative analysis of multiple attributes between glyphs and 2) to support multi-dimensional visual search. We describe a system that incorporates focus and context glyphs to control sorting in a visually intuitive manner and for viewing sorted results in an Interactive, Multi-dimensional Glyph (IMG) plot that enables users to perform high-dimensional sorting, analyse and examine data trends in detail. To demonstrate the usability of glyph sorting, we present a case study in rugby event analysis for comparing and analysing trends within matches. This work is undertaken in conjunction with a national rugby team. From using glyph sorting, analysts have reported the discovery of new insight beyond traditional match analysis.

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The process of rigorous training and coaching is one that is essential to any sports player aiming to develop their abilities further. From the novice player through to professional athletes, it is vital to maintain and assess their level of performance in order to progress to a higher standard. However, traditional practice routines can often be non-strategic and devised with an “ad-hoc” approach. In order for a training regime to be beneficial to a player, methods to examine a player's performance are desirable and can offer quantifiable feedback that will help the player to understand their current weaknesses and provide a benchmark to improve upon. This article focuses on the introduction of a systematic skills test. We assess the fundamental physics of snooker and from this we identify a set of key skills that characterises the basis of all snooker shots. We present 5 snooker tests that can be used to quantify the performance of these key skills. This allows us to analyse snooker players in an objective manner based on their level of ability for each key skill. The article concludes with a user study that assesses the performance of novice, intermediate and professional players when performing our proposed snooker skills test, which demonstrates the ability to make accurate comparison between players of different ability.