Who Is the Prominent Tactical Position in Rink-Hockey? A Network Approach Based on Centrality Metrics

(ProQuest: . denotes formulae omitted.)IntroductionThe rink-hockey it is specific invasion team sport where players' uses quad skate with four wheels set in two side-by-side pairs (Brazio, 2006). Each player uses a stick to drive the ball. The dynamics of rink-hockey it is very similar to any invasion team, despite the possibility to be possible to play in the back of goals. As every invasion team, the internal logic of rink-hockey deal with strategy and tactical behaviour based a cooperationopposition relationship during all match (Griffin & Butler, 2005). As a sport that depends from the cooperation between teammates, it is very relevant to identify how the patterns of play occur (Clemente, Martins, Kalamaras, Wong, & Mendes, 2015). This specific information can be retrieved from the process of match analysis (Travassos, Davids, Araujo, & Esteves, 2013). In this scientific field there are many approaches that can provide outcomes to understand the specific dynamics of a team (Coutts, 2014). In the sport of rink-hockey, there is a lack of match analysis studies (Brazio, 2006; Morujao & Ferreira, 2009). In the study that analysed five official matches of the U20 Portuguese Team in the European Cup, it was found that in offensive process the team generated 408 units of attacks distributed by the five matches (Brazio, 2006). From these units of attack, the majority it was based on positional attack (in circulation - indirect attack), followed by counter-attack and quick transition. Another found it was that during attacking process the majority of units of attack cover both lateral sides of the field and the central zone. Following this line of analysis, it was found in another study that central zone it is determinant in the attacking move based on the greater amount of shooting (Morujao & Ferreira, 2009). Considering the time-motion profile of rink-hockey players, it was found that rinkhockey players performs between 418 and 422 displacements per match and 43.5% of such displacements in low intensity (Tantina, Vidal, & Lopez, 2014). Finally, in the case of teammates interactions it was found that per each unit of attack it was made 2.73 passes in average (Brazio, 2006). As possible to identify in the previous studies, the approach to analyse rink-hockey sport is based on traditional notational analysis that's depends from observational methodologies. In fact, the observational process it is the most common in every team sports so far (Barreira, Garganta, Castellano, & Anguera, 2013). Nevertheless, recent technological advances (in the field of tracking players) have allowing to apply some mathematical algorithms to determine the collective performance such as temporal-patterns (Jonsson et al., 2006), spatiotemporal and tactical metrics (Clemente, Couceiro, Martins, Mendes, & Figueiredo, 2014) and network analysis based on graph theory (Duch, Waitzman, & Amaral, 2010; Pena & Touchette, 2012). This last approach (network analysis) it has been growing in the last years as an alternative approach to traditional notational analysis (Clemente, Martins, et al., 2015; Cotta, Mora, Merelo, & Merelo-Molina, 2013; Grund, 2012). No study in rink-hockey it was found. Nevertheless, in the football analysis it has been possible to identify that the prominent players in the attacking building are the external defenders and the midfielders (Clemente, Couceiro, Martins, & Mendes, 2014). During counter-attacks or offensive transitions the prominent players are external midfielders and forwards (Malta & Travassos, 2014). Besides this individual analysis to the centrality level of each player, it was found that teams that shows greater cooperation between teammates ensures betters results in competitions (Clemente et al., 2015; Grund, 2012). The network analysis allows to understand how teammates cooperate and identify the prominent players in the team. Despite of such possibilities no studies it were conducted in rink-hockey. …