GPS tracking is everywhere in pro sports but many AFLW players are uncomfortable with it

The 2024 AFLW season kicked off last week, continuing the growth of a variety of sports that were once considered only for men.

This growth has resulted in more women athletes entering elite sporting structures for the first time.

However, these environments are often designed for men.

AFLW footballers, for example, are asked to train and prepare like their AFL peers, including tracking their physical activities through digital performance monitoring.

This can be problematic, because most women athletes are still semi-professional, balancing their sporting commitments with work or caregiving responsibilities.

This prompted us to research AFLW players’ comfort with digital performance tracking.

We found many were uncomfortable with some or many aspects of clubs’ digital performance monitoring programs, which can impact tracking effectiveness while adversely affecting the players.

Technology and elite sport

Digital performance monitoring, like GPS tracking, is now widely used in most elite sports.

GPS tracking can monitor athletes’ movement, speed, acceleration and effort during training and in games.

Sporting teams use this data to compare and contrast athlete performances while managing workloads in the hope of preventing injury.

GPS tracking guides training schedules, is used for performance measuring and is used for medical information to manage or prevent injuries.

In the AFLW, all players wear a GPS monitor during training sessions and games.

These data are then shared among the team – a sport scientist or coach will often display the data in the changerooms or share it through collective messaging groups.

They will then often rank the footballers’ metrics from fastest to slowest or the most to the fewest kilometres run.

This can create a highly competitive atmosphere that can be confronting for athletes who are new to elite sporting environments.

The data are also seen as objective and unquestionable — no asterisks are attached to a player, for example, who had worked a 12-hour shift before training, which affected their outputs.

AFLW: emerging history and semi-professionalism

The AFLW is the elite women’s Australian rules football competition.

Founded in 2017 with eight clubs, it expanded to 18 teams in 2022.

There is a mix of athletes playing in the AFLW.

Most come from junior development pathways. Some, though, are elite athletes from other sports, like Fremantle’s Ash Brazill, who represented Australia in netball.

Most AFLW footballers are considered semi-professional. This means they need to balance work, study, caregiving or other responsibilities with their sporting careers.

In 2023, the average AFLW footballer’s wage was around $60,000 yearly, well below Australian average incomes.

So most AFLW players need to continue working while playing football.

Another complexity is that most AFLW footballers receive short half-year contracts and have few job prospects within the sport beyond their playing careers.

While AFLW clubs operate in conjunction with the men’s program, and the players have access to similar elite facilities, there is a lack of infrastructural support for the players, such as full-time access to coaches, their clubs, sport scientists, or dietitians.

The footballers are expected to perform as elite athletes, yet they face semi-professional conditions such as limited access, support and compensation.

These conditions led us to see if this affected how AFLW footballers used and experienced digital performance monitoring and whether being semi-professional athletes affected their willingness to engage in digital performance monitoring and the data produced.

What our research revealed

We discovered many AFLW footballers find digital performance monitoring a complicated and confusing practice that reminds them they are outsiders to the game of Australian rules.

Several factors affect a player’s tracking data. These include personal situations such as caregiving or working responsibilities, lack of sleep, menstruation, and how the wearable device fits — a particular issue when devices are often designed for male body types.

However, when the athlete reads these data, it is void of these subjectivities and presented objectively — “you just didn’t run fast enough” — often negatively impacting the athlete’s sporting experiences.

This highlights ongoing issues for women athletes entering emerging sporting environments like the AFLW.

In short, the players are expected to perform as elite athletes, but their realities as semi-professional athletes are not considered.

A guide for teams

Our study has underscored a critical reality: semi-professional women athletes’ engagement with digital performance monitoring is inherently subjective and complex.

Player-centred policies for digital performance monitoring are crucial.

We suggest clubs look to improve in this area with five key focuses:

1. communication of purpose, with encouraged, open two-way dialogue, allowing athletes to receive and seek timely feedback

2. offer a clear understanding of what is tracked, why, and how that data is used and not used

3. performance monitoring should be proportional, meeting the club’s, and player’s, needs

4. transparent data-sharing practices, which consider and include the subjective factors unique to semi-professional athletes

5. increased wearability: ensuring gender-appropriate wearables that fit a variety of body shapes are available to all athletes.

A player-centred framework can help AFLW clubs maximise their sizeable investment in digital performance monitoring by offering each footballer the best possible chance of reaching their full physical potential.

More importantly, semi-professional women athletes will be empowered to not only participate but thrive in elite sporting competitions.