Bradford to use GPS technology to track players' performance

Bradford will become the first Super League club to track their players using satellite technology this season as they aim to rediscover the route to the play-offs. The Bulls slumped to ninth in the table last year, easily their worst finish since the grand final series was introduced in 1998, and their coach Steve McNamara has responded with a clutch of new signings – three of them from the 2008 Australian champions Manly – and a shake-up of his backroom team. But McNamara believes the GPS monitoring system that will allow Bradford access to far more detailed information about their players' performance during both training and matches could be the most significant advance both for the Bulls and for British rugby league. "We used the system with the England squad during the Four Nations series last year and it's absolutely amazing what you can do with it," said McNamara, who remains a leading contender to succeed Tony Smith as the national coach having assisted him since 2007. "It's a live system so you can see during games how much players are doing and how they are coping. For the moment we're delighted at Bradford that we've got access to the equipment, but for the good of the national team I think we should have it at every Super League club." The device is placed in a harness incorporated into a vest and linked to a monitoring patch on the player's back. It will be used to monitor heart-rates and track a player's movement around the field. A Rugby Football League spokesman confirmed that Bradford had been given permission to use the tracking devices on their players for the first time in a testimonial match for the Leeds hooker Matt Diskin on Sunday, and that the governing body hopes to make the technology more widely available throughout the Super League. McNamara has delayed a decision on appointing a new captain until after the Leeds game, suggesting that Matt Orford – the former Manly scrum-half who will make his Bulls debut at Headingley – remains the favourite. He ruled out following the example of Wigan's new coach Michael Maguire, who has revealed that he will appoint a leadership group from which the captain will be appointed on a match-by-match basis – a system that has been employed in previous years by Melbourne Storm, where Maguire worked as an assistant to Craig Bellamy. Maguire said Sean O'Loughlin, the England loose forward who has been Wigan's captain for the last three seasons and will remain in the leadership group, "has impressed me with his receptiveness to the concept".