The British & Irish Lions brings together the best players from four nations to create an All-Star team. Performance staff are also picked from across the home unions and meet up with the team only weeks before the tour begins.

The challenges the performance team face are considerable, not least dealing with the data that modern elite sport provides. An additional complication for The Lions is reporting back to the home nations who are keen to keep track of their players while they are away.

Understanding the complexities and challenges of an elite performance team, Vodafone in collaboration with Sport Science Agency and The Lions used its expertise to develop PLAYER.Connect. A first of its kind performance dashboard. It uses Vodafone’s IoT technology to aggregate data from existing wearables. This will provide a central performance hub that can be used across the performance team to give holistic player, unit, team or squad information.

The video below, hosted by Gabby Logan, features Sport Science Agency Director Alex Skelton, Vodafone Head of Innovation Danny Kelly and British & Irish Lions Player Maro Itoji discussing the value of data in sport and specifically how PLAYER.Connect can support performance and performance teams both now and in the future.