You do not tend to spot many Newcastle United shirts in the west of Ireland, but there is a reason why the Moore family in Sligo are decked out in black-and-white. And have been for many years for that matter.
Dr Brian Moore is the CEO of Orreco, the world-leading bio-analytics firm, who have worked with some of the biggest names in sport across the globe. Yet the Irishman has never forgotten that Newcastle were the first professional football club to enlist Orreco's help.
Orreco, in Moore's words, are a small part of 'the jigsaw' at Newcastle, feeding in objective data to help support the club's decision-making process with player recovery. That has never been more important following Newcastle's shift in style under the demanding Eddie Howe.
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Players inherited from the Ashley era and new signings alike have not only had to adapt to the intensity of training and playing - they have also had to sustain that output. That is why Moore is not surprised to see Newcastle 'topping the charts' in distance covered and high-speed running in the Premier League. Newcastle have also completed 270 high turnovers and 464 pressed sequences this season, which are among some of the best returns in the Premier League. The Magpies, statistically, are one of the most intense sides in the top-flight, with the fourth-lowest passes per defensive action figure (10.5) in the division.
This does not happen by chance. The players have tailored programmes to support them when delivering Howe's game plans and Orreco's recovery lab, which is the most advanced system of its kind in world sport, has helped bring the club's data streams and departments together. It is a breakthrough that has been years in the making.
"One of the things I like about professional sport is that it's ruthless," Dr Moore told ChronicleLive. "If you don't add value, you're not kept around for very long. We have been privileged to work with the team for over a decade.
"Newcastle have been playing a very long game with their data-forward approach and now they are in a position to really reap the rewards. You have started to see the very earliest signs, but I believe there is going to be an exponential return on their vision in the coming seasons, particularly when it's given added capacity, because it is very clear and strategic thinking supported by the coaching staff and sporting director all the way up to the ownership group."
A lot has changed since Dr Paul Catterson, the club's head of medicine, first picked up the phone to Dr Moore after noticing how one of Newcastle's players was very tired when he returned to pre-season training following the Euros in 2012. The standard tests had not thrown up anything out of the ordinary. However, after learning more about oxidative stress and homeostasis from Dr Moore, it transpired that the individual was under recovered following back-to-back intense seasons and the added stress of international competition.
Newcastle came up with a bespoke programme to manage the player's reintroduction to the team rather than just parachuting him back in with the same sessions. That set the tone for the approach the club have taken with player recovery ever since. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits all solution anymore - it has long been proven that some players take longer to recover than others - and no stone is left unturned to measure key markers. As Dr Moore puts it: "Newcastle are relentless in their approach on the pitch and off the pitch."
GPS loads are analysed after the games. VALD data is looked at two days after matches. The group fill out wellness questionnaires. Heck, the players can even choose to wear Oura rings so their sleep is analysed.
Whereas Newcastle once had to wait a few days for the results of blood tests, point of care testing means the club can check inflammation in the body in just four to six minutes. Data profiles, as a result, can quickly be built on new signings and these so-called 'adaptive ranges' kick in after just two or three measurements.
"Say you get a test done if you go to the doctors," Dr Moore explained. "You will get a normal range and that normal range is the population, but what our biostatistics team, which is led by Professor John Newell and Dr Jaynal Abedin, have built with Newcastle are personalised and adaptive ranges.
"It's learning about an individual so if something is out of range, it's not just out of range - it's out of range for you. It's learning about how each player adapts and responds.
"The demand on a player also depends on the opposition, the workload build-up, the workload recovering. It's really just there to support the players' recovery while they are maintaining huge outputs. It's giving a layer of additional objective information combined with the subjective of how the player is actually feeling.
"As the season has evolved, it's a testament to the Newcastle performance team that they're in this position with how the players, the coaching staff and the sports science and medicine teams have worked. It's a relatively smaller pool of players, it's a consistency of selection, but they are maintaining outputs that are off the charts."
Newcastle were quietly at the forefront of this data revolution during the Ashley era, but Moore has himself witnessed the change in 'every touch point at the club' post-takeover. Whereas Newcastle were once fighting to stay up, data is now giving the club a competitive edge in the race for the top four.
Players know that their recovery is being taken extremely seriously and Dr Catterson previously told ChronicleLive how he was able to target the 'best in class' to help him under the new owners. Newcastle, for example, were able to bring in a full-time nutritionist, Andreas Kasper, last summer while assistant first-team doctor David Eastwood and physios Danny Murphy and Nathan Ring are among those who have also joined the growing medical department.
It falls to this medical team, the sports science department and Orreco's man on the ground, Dr Diarmuid Daniels, to collect data between a day and three days after a game. All these numbers are then discussed in a multi-disciplinary meeting where players are put into three risk categories: higher, medium and lower.
Dr Catterson, head physio Murphy and head of performance Dan Hodges will later go into Howe's office and feedback these findings directly to the coaching staff to help inform decision-making. It sounds simple, but it has taken years of work behind the scenes to get to this point.
"We are privileged that we are in high-performance environments around the world, but what Dr Catterson, Dan Hodges and the team have built on the sports science and data side is world-leading," Dr Moore added. "Now, with Dan Ashworth as a sporting director, that is just going to continue to develop. People would be very surprised if they understood how advanced they are behind the scenes. It's all about getting better every day."
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