Rugby was a big part of my life at university. I played Second Row – a forward – which meant I took comfort in two things: (1) being surrounded by large humans and (2) never really having to make any hard decisions.
Catch. Run forward. Fall down. Stand up. Repeat.
Maybe that’s why, like most people who follow the game, I admire the unpredictable genius of Scotland’s fly-half Finn Russell. For anyone less rugby-obsessed, Finn has been compared to Lionel Messi for the way he reads and shapes the game – arguably one of the best players of all time.
What he isn’t, and never has been, is a man who blindly follows a plan. He plays what’s in front of him - and yes (you guessed it..!) - he adapts to real-time information while he plays.
When Scotland faced New Zealand this weekend past, I’m sure somewhere in the Scotland camp there was a beautifully detailed game plan written on a whiteboard. It’s essential - every player needs a structure to start from.
But what Finn does is adaptive real-time analysis. He’s updating his own model of the match as he plays. That means spotting the defender a step out of position, the uncovered space, the tired legs, the teammate who’s drifted into a perfect gap - the list is endless.
When I played chess, at least the pieces didn’t move unless I told them to. Finn’s managing a board where every piece is thinking for itself - and he still finds the winning combination (…most of the time!).
There are only a handful of players who can be fully in the action and somehow have the distance to create instant strategy. He’s one of them.
I’ll never forget his triple miss-pass in the second half of Scotland’s 38-38 draw with England - 80,000 people at Twickenham holding their breath while he saw something nobody else did.
Adapting to real-time data, rather than relying purely on historical data is a natural evolution. The nice thing about what we’re building at LoopFX is that we don’t need 14 other people to have a rough idea of what 1 maverick is thinking!
Catch. Read. React. Adjust. Repeat.
Maybe that’s the better version.
(Image: ShutterStock)
