PONE-D-22-01015Quantifying congestion with player tracking data in Australian FootballPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Alexander,

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Comments to the authors

General comments

Thanks for allowing me to review this manuscript. Overall, the study is of very high quality and the findings are applicable and relevant to those working within AFL. The two methods presented to quantify congestion are novel and highly innovative, requiring extensive analyses so I commend you all on that. A major strength of the study was the ability of the authors to explain the findings in simple, practical terms, useful for practitioners as the analyses would be unfamiliar to most readers. Although I have some understanding of machine learning, much of the analyses were unfamiliar to me, so I can’t comment too much about the appropriateness, however the figures were easy to interpret. The manuscript is very well written, and explains the concept of the study exceptionally, and the as mentioned the findings are explained well. My suggestions/comments are mostly related to some additional detail that I believe is necessary within the methods which are detailed below. Thanks again, and congrats on completing such a high quality manuscript.

Specific comments

Abstract

Line 40: Consider adding ‘method’ between second and aimed. To me it read like an aim of the study, when really you’re referring to the method

Introduction

Overall, the introduction is really well written and provides context to the reader about the purpose of the study

Line 75-76: Where you refer to the ‘speed’ of the game, you need a bit more detail around this. Specifically, are you referring to m/min (assuming so), but I can imagine many readers may assume speed as in velocity of running and perhaps high-speed running volumes. Provide descriptive data in line 77.

Methods

Line 109: Why was 2020 not included? Was this due to the reduced duration of games?

Line 112: Did you obtain data from all teams in the AFL or one team? How did you obtain this data if it involved multiple teams?

Line 113: The S5 devices aren’t LPS enabled, these devices would have been worn in the 2019 season, but Vector would have been used in 2020-2021. In 2019, Catapult Clearsky (LPS devices) were worn in Marvel stadium. Can you confirm this information, as well as detail/report any between-device information that’s necessary here.

Line 133: Please provide detail on your methods of determining player location data. I’m assuming you used GNSS lat/long data, but please include details on this within the methods

Figure 1: The quality of the figure seems quite poor in the PDF. I can see it’s a tif file, but perhaps check it in the next submission. Also, I wonder if it’s necessary to include the top panel here – for simplicity?

Line 193: State where that data is presented – Figure 2 and 3

Line 214: Did the same Champion Data staff label/code the disposals?

Line 233: Should the Shapely Additive exPlanations package be in italics like the others previously reported?

Results

Overall, the results explain the findings really well. My only suggestion would be with the figures to make them look a bit ‘cleaner’ and publication worthy. For example, removing the grey section around them, lighten (or remove) the gridlines, position the legend in a consistent spot. Also the colour scheme used across each figure varies quite a bit. I understand the colours are used to represent different things, but perhaps consider using a similar theme

Discussion

The discussion was well written, and explained the results in simple, applied/practical terms. This is really useful for readers, as the analysis is very complex, the findings need to be interpreted clearly for the translation of this study into practice.

Line 314: Perhaps link the first two paragraphs together.

Line 382: Can you state the reasoning for this in the methods

References

Ref 2, 14, 34, 35 journal title needs to be in capital format

Reviewer #2: The authors are to be commended for a well-written article. It is the first known article that proposes objective data analysis techniques to capture the congestion in Australian football. Both approaches seem to provide more effective information than current methods (i.e., manual input). This not only seems to be useful to evaluate congestion in AF, but also may be practical for many other collective sports-related phenomena. Generally, the topic falls within the scope of the journal and could be of potential interest to its readers.

However, the following minor concerns need to be addressed before publication:

Due to the large amount of abbreviations a list of abbreviations would be recommended, as long as journal’s guidelines approve it, to facilitate the reading.

Abstract:

Ln34: Australian instead of Australia

*Ln35: “is an important consideration in identifying passing capacity, assessing fan enjoyment, and evaluating the effect of rule changes”. You mention these aspects as important when studying congestion but they are not mentioned elsewhere in the article aside from the abstract. Why? In my opinion, they should be mentioned if you consider in the introduction or discussion, otherwise I would remove them from the abstract.

Ln54: Congestion is already in the title. I would suggest to switch it for another key word to avoid repeat it. In this way it may facilitate this article to be found from more searches.

Materials and methods:

*Ln203 to Ln214: As I see, the definitions of level of congestion and spatiotemporal features for disposal classification model are done by yourself without any evidence but in consultation with professionals. I understand there is no work that establishes previous criteria about it. But why these levels and not others?

As you may understand these definitions may be somehow relative to the individual and environmental constraints of the game. For example, for nearby congestion “multiple players with 0-10m of ball-carrier but there is some space to make a decision”: within this 10 m some experienced and fresh player probably will have time to make a clear decision, however, a novice and fatigued young player during a rainy day probably can feel high congestion in this space to make an “adequate” decision. I am not intended to change your definitions but to help future readers to consider different features for classifying the dynamic and nonlinear level of congestion, assessing previously the main constraints of the game (e.g., age of players, level of players, meteorology, etc.). In my opinion, this should be briefly considered as a practical implication (in discussion) for next studies to do not treat it as a universal and fixed rule.

Discussion:

Ln310: Why do you not use the abbreviation for Australian Football (AF) here?

*Ln315: Why do you use approximately? Is there no exact value for it?

Ln347: Very interesting finding. This reinforce previous articles finding how collective coordination dynamics decrease across the periods of the match, highly influenced by effort accumulation. See:

Duarte, R., Araújo, D., Folgado, H. et al. Capturing complex, non-linear team behaviours during competitive football performance. J Syst Sci Complex 26, 62–72 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11424-013-2290-3

This may suggest that your used data analysis techniques may be proposed as complementary methods of analysis to approach effort accumulation and acute fatigue effects in collective sports.

Also, your data analysis techniques may be applied to capture congestion not only in competition but also in training when simulating different environments similar to matches. For example, when manipulating player’s space of interaction (Ric et al., 2017) or temporary numerical imbalances (Cantón et al., 2019). Indeed, this study offers objective tools with highly applicability in collective sports.

Ric A, Torrents C, Gonçalves B, Torres-Ronda L, Sampaio J, Hristovski R (2017) Dynamics of tactical behaviour in association football when manipulating players' space of interaction. PLoS ONE 12(7): e0180773. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180773

Canton, A., Torrents, C., Ric, A., Gonçalves, B., Sampaio, J., & Hristovski, R. (2019). Effects of Temporary Numerical Imbalances on Collective Exploratory Behavior of Young and Professional Football Players. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 1968. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01968

Ln380: Moreover, this study provides data analysis techniques that take into account the coordination dynamics properties of teams. From a complex systems based-approach it seems more adequate than using isolated and timeless methods (Montull et al., 2022) to assess not only congestion but also, as I mentioned, other sport-related phenomena influencing the collective behaviour of teams as effort, match strategies, numerical imbalances, etc. In this sense, other methods of analysis based on coordination dynamic properties, such as Uncontrolled manifold to assess synergies or network analysis, may help to approach congestion and related phenomena in future research as well.

Montull, L., Slapšinskaitė-Dackevičienė, A., Kiely, J. et al. Integrative Proposals of Sports Monitoring: Subjective Outperforms Objective Monitoring. Sports Med - Open 8, 41 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-022-00432-z

Conclusion:

Ln391: “approximately 25%”, as I mentioned above, cannot be described with its exact value?

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Heidi Thornton

Reviewer #2: Yes: Lluc Montull

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Quantifying congestion with player tracking data in Australian Football

PONE-D-22-01015R1

Dear Dr. Alexander,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Gábor Vattay, PhD, DSc

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Please, before resubmission correct the few typo/missing information mentioned by the reviewer! 

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: General comments

Great work on making the suggested changes from both reviewers. The manuscript has substantially improved in quality and is very close to being published in my opinion. I have just a few remaining queries and suggestions, that are detailed below.

Specific comments

Abstract: Looks great

Introduction:

Line 66: Consumption of what? Be more specific here or consider using a different word. Reads like consumption of food

Line 77: Please use the correct units of measurement/notation here for m/s, so m·sP-1P

Materials and methods

Line 188: Figure caption is here, but no figure?

Results

The figures look much cleaner now without the gridlines

Discussion

Line 392: Explain what you mean by organic in this context

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Heidi Compton

Reviewer #2: Yes: Lluc Montull

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