Sporting video analysis taken to new level by Avenir’s Conneely

Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon

A fascinating new sports course offering training and experience in performance and video analysis is to begin next week, with the programme itself to be run in conjunction with stakeholders in the FAI, the IRFU and the GAA. The course, spearheaded by leading performance analysis company Avenir Sports, whose head office is based on Salthill Devon’s grounds at Drom, is aimed to meet the increasing demand coming from organisations, clubs and teams for a service that once was seen as the sole remit of professional teams and elite sportspeople.

“It (performance analysis) has got to a stage that is it is now available to all clubs and all schools at an affordable price – unless, of course, you want the high-end package,” quips Tommy Conneely, who is the owner and director of Avenir Sports and its sister company Avenir Performance Solutions.

Today, Conneely is one of the leading authorities in the industry of performance analysis and yet his pathway to this point in time was – in sports science terms – not necessarily a conventional one.

A former teacher at Sligo Grammar School, the Galway native, who lined out for Connacht Rugby throughout the 1980s, took a leap of faith when accepting the role of development officer with the IRFU and the Connacht branch in 1990, where he was responsible for coach education and player development.

During his time with the province, he also progressed to become an assistant coach in the late ‘90s and it was then he began to have a closer look at the value of “video-based performance analysis”.

“So, it would have all originated in Connacht rather than in any of the other provinces,” he says. “We would have used it to do the analysis for (Warren) Gatland when he was Connacht head coach.”

At that time, all the video analysis had to be done manually – there was no such thing as digital coding as you have today – and this would often incorporate using two VCRs to record and put the package together.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.