Match-play movement demands of international and domestic women’s rugby sevens players in an elite dual-level tournament

ABSTRACT

Objectives

To characterize and compare match-play movement demands via Global Positioning Systems (GPS) between international and domestic women’s rugby sevens players performing in a novel elite dual-level tournament, with consideration to position and tournament characteristics.

Design

Fifty-four rugby sevens players; twenty-one international(5 speed edges, 8 backs, 8 forwards), and thirty-three domestic(10 speed edges, 11 backs, 12 forwards) wore GPS devices during an elite dual-level tournament covering 2 seasons, with 367 full match-play data files analysed. Internationaland domestic players were distributed evenly between competing teams.

Methods

Match-play movement demands were characterized by distance, speed, and acceleration-based indices from 5 to 10 Hz GPS devices.

Results

International players recorded significantly higher high-intensity match-play movement demands compared to domestic players in distance in high and very high-speed zones (P = 0.01, P = 0.03, P = 0.01, P = 0.03), maximal acceleration (P = 0.001), maximal velocity (P < .001), speed exertion (P = 0.01),       , and acceleration load density (P = 0.03)   . Positional analysis demonstrated forwards displayed the largest significant differences between international and domestic players. . Total and relative match-play movement demands of the dual-leveltournament also showed comparable demands to previous international tournament research .

Conclusions

Results identify key points of difference in match-play movement demands between player levels in women’s rugby sevens, and provides important information on the characteristics of playing positions, and of a dual-level tournament of this nature. This will improve the design and implementation of structures from domestic to international level.

KEYWORDS:

• GPS
• Training acclimation
• international
• domestic
• women’s rugby sevens

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Cecilia Kitic and Dr. James Fell for help with study concept.

Confirmation of Ethical Compliance

All procedures were approved by the Tasmanian Health and Medical Human Research Ethics Committee in line with the requirements stipulated in the Declaration of Helsinki; Ethics No: H0017582, and written informed consent was obtained from all participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/24733938.2022.2153157.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is part of the corresponding authors PhD Research with no other funding being provided.