Koudela, Hayden

Schaerf, Timothy M

Lathlean, Timothy

Murphy, Aron

Welch, Mitchell

2025-01

<p>Rugby sevens is a small-sided variant of rugby union characterised by fast-moving, high-intensity gameplay and is an example of a team invasion sport, where players work together to achieve a shared goal of attacking and defending as a cohesive unit. The dynamics of such sports can be viewed as self-organizing systems, where individual players form collective patterns without a centralized mechanism of control. Inspired by the analysis of collective movement in animals, this novel study investigates the emergent patterns of order and disorder in sub-elite female rugby sevens using order parameters (typically used to analyse particle systems) to characterize the team’s collective state during different phases of play. The findings demonstrate that defensive gameplay is more ordered, with more compact formations, compared to attacking play, and there is a correlation between alignment/order in player motion and group speed. The work further suggests that the collective states formed differ between sequences of play with different levels of ground gained by the attacking team. These observations provide a sound justification for player training with a focus on cohesive defensive movements to resist disruptions from opposing attackers, while employing attacking tactics that disrupt the cohesion and order of opposing teams.</p>

Journal of Sports Sciences, 43(1), p. 48-59

1466-447X

0264-0414

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/69131

Routledge

Attribution 4.0 International

Investigating the Emergence of Collective States Within Rugby Sevens Gameplay

Journal Article

Publication