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Migratning IACSS09

In December 2008 I came across the social media service provided by Ning. I am always keen to explore the functionality of social media tools and signed up for a Premium Service account with Ning. This account provided an advert-clear skin for the site.

I thought I would use the IACSS09 conference as the focus of the Ning site. I have written about the site in a post titled Sport n.0: Connecting Social Networks.
I liked Ning’s mix of tools and thought they exemplified Clark Quinn’s (2009) observation that social media provide:

A rich ecosystem of tools supporting communities to share thinking, solve problems, and create innovative new solutions is a fountain of new value to the organization.


This year Ning is changing account structures and a number of users of the service have chosen to migrate their content to other sites. I wondered if the word to describe this move was migratning.
Given the IACSS09 site was a specific attempt to use social media for an event I have decided to close the Ning site. Ning provided the export tools for this activity:

I have reposited the IOCSS09 Ning archive at this Box.Net link. Some Ning groups have moved their site content to Grou.ps. Ozgur Kuru provides some additional information about this process.
Some time ago I thought I might distribute the information about IACSS09 in the cloud. In addition to the Box.Net link …

This process has helped me understand the potential of social media tools and has underscored the importance of curating ephemeral content. Some material from the conference is unavailable including the official web site and the Twitter #iacss09 tag.

Photo Credit
Tangled

Writing Lives, Telling Stories

One of the highlights of last week for me was the Radio National Book Show program (12 August) that discussed Asne Seierstad’s The Bookseller of Kabul. Ramona Koval discussed writing about life in fragile territories with Christina Asquith and Christina Lamb.

The discussion raised very important issues about journalism, new fiction and ethical behaviour. Asne Seierstad has been sued in a Norwegian Court over breaches of privacy by one of the women portrayed in the book. According to one account of the case it was stated that “Seierstad had used inaccurate information in her accounts” and did not act in good faith. In another article, Asne Seierstad is quoted as asserting that “I have acted in good faith, and have done my best to verify the statements and quotations so that they will be as accurate as possible. I have done that by asking questions on different occasions when there was any confusion, by asking someone other than the main characters in the situation.”

Christina Patterson suggests that “this was never going to be a story with a happy outcome. Extensive hospitality of the what’s-mine-is-yours Muslim variety and the warts-and-all Western memoir were never a combination likely to leave ‘honour’ intact. The bookseller probably wasn’t overly familiar with the genre. Seierstad should have known better.”
What I found particularly informative about the Radio National discussion was the expertise of Christina Asquith and Christina Lamb. In the podcast of the discussion they take different approaches to writing lives. Both have remarkable backgrounds in working in fragile territories. Anyone interested in ethnographic research will find the discussion a great resource to contemplate:
  • Overt and covert research
  • The responsibilities of a researcher
  • The ownership of intimate details and disclosures
  • The legitimacy of observing a culture from a different cultural perspective
In ethnographic study ‘being around’ is an essential characteristic of understanding cultural forms and practices. The Book Show discussion highlighted the ethical dimensions of research particularly when the researcher is a guest in the home of those about whom she will write.

The Bookseller of Kabul, Sisters in War (Christina Asquith) and Small Wars Permitting (Christina Lamb) are fascinating examples of a genre that encapsulate important issues around thick description, writing lives and telling stories.
Photo Credits
The Shop of Books
Notebook Collection

Performing to a Score, Performing to Score

This month’s ABC Limelight Magazine (August 2010) has a discussion of performing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I am interested in the parallels between interpreting a musical composition and realising a game plan in sport.

Jo Litson’s article in Limelight explores the different tempos used in playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Richard Tognetti is quoted in the article as saying “the weird thing is that it’s now an accepted practice to play it at a much , much slower tempo than what Beethoven wrote”.
Richard Tognetti has an annotated score of the Symphony from 1817. This score has the composer’s metronome markings. Richard Tognetti observes that “the markings are really, really, really specific and we know Beethoven was adamant that they were to be adhered to. He famously said his Ninth Symphony worked so well in Berlin, I think it was, because they played it at the metronome marking”.
Jo Litson reports that a 1945 recording of the Fifth Symphony “zips by in just 26 minutes and 45 seconds”. Recordings in 1959 and 1969 by a different conductor “run to an expansive 40 minutes”.

It seems to me that game plans have similar issues. Coaches and players spend a great deal of time practicing (rehearsing) and developing tempos. Unlike an orchestra where there is no immediate direct competition, game playing necessitates the negotiation of tempo. Dominant teams with on-field leaders (orchestra leaders) appear able to set (sometimes re-set) the tempo at which the game is played. This seems true of race plans in individual sports too.
A musical score and a game plan offer opportunities for interpretation as well as application. Conductors and coaches personalise both sets of opportunities. Listening to a performance of a symphony or watching a game played in a particular way give us moments of recognition that affirm and question our love of music and sport. They create comfort and unease.
I found it informative to read in Jo Litson’s article that:

The Fifth had its premier in Vienna in December 1808 as part of a four -hour concert directed by Beethoven himself … it was not the most auspicious beginning. The makeshift orchestra had only one rehearsal and didn’t play well. Also, the hall was bitterley cold, so by the time it got to the Fifth in the second act, the exhausted audience was too frozen to take much notice. There was critical response.

I think these are experiences that many coaches will recognise. It took almost two years for the Fifth Symphony to receive critical acclaim. It is now “the most famous opening in all classical music“.
This month’s ABC Limelight Magazine provides further links for me in my exploration of performance. Performing to a score and performing to score have great synergies.
Photo Credits
Carl Davis
Coaching

Unlocking Experience, Enabling Action


In the last week Bret Easton Ellis has visited Australia. He attended his first writers’ festival in twenty-five years. I caught up with his visit through Margaret Throsby’s interview with him on Classic FM.
What was interesting about the interview with Margaret Throsby was his perspective on how interviewers unlock personal experience. This is the link to the podcast of the interview and his statement about the enjoyment of the interview with her.
It was interesting to read of Ramona Koval’s interview with Bret Ellis at the Byron Bay Festival:

The ABC’s Ramona Koval opened an onstage conversation with Ellis on Friday night by asking about character development and morality in Imperial Bedrooms. Ellis paused, looking puzzled and pained, then began a manic dialogue about having discovered the Australian singer Delta Goodrem while watching music videos in his hotel room.

A podcast of the interview between Ramona Koval and Bret Ellis can be found at this link.
These interviews encouraged me to reflect on watching the broadcast of the Raiders v Panthers rugby league game on Monday (9 August). There was a great glimpse of David Furner (the Raiders’ coach) at half time speaking with his players. It would have been interesting to be in the changing rooms at that time.The Raiders were losing by fourteen points and were facing exit from the competition for the end of season play-offs. They won the second half 18-0.
This is a link to an ABC interview with David after the game.
One newspaper report noted:

Asked what had sparked the turnaround, Campese had no hesitation in nominating Furner’s half-time address. Rather than give the players a spray, as Furner admitted he wanted to do, the former Raiders great calmly told them they could still win but had to keep an opposition side scoreless in the second half for the first time this season.

”… he just told us to get our breath back and sit down. He then said we only got two opportunities in the first half and we scored off both of them, so if we could hold them out, which we had to, and get the ball down their end we could score the tries.
”He said all we needed was about five good attacks and we got that and we scored three tries. That was about all he said and we just talked about shutting them out in the second half. I think what he said just gave us confidence and we went out and did it.”
Furner said: ”I wasn’t happy but I think the big thing we needed was belief and confidence. We talked about discipline in our game and discipline in defence, but the main thing was that they couldn’t score a point in the second half. It was about 40 minutes of character. It was 18-0 in the second half and I said that is what it would take to win that game.”

The Canberra Times observed that:

Whatever David Furner said to his team at half-time last night, the Canberra Raiders need to bottle it and use it for the rest of the season. With their season on the line, Furner’s words ignited the Raiders to help them storm to a 30-26 win over the Penrith Panthers at Canberra Stadium. Down by 14 points at the break and with their finals hopes slipping away, it wasn’t a verbal lashing that spurred the Raiders to just their second come-from-behind victory this season. The players said it was Furner’s restrained address that inspired them to a rare fightback.


What no one has discussed to date is what David said before the game! The second half turn around may have a lot to share about how to trigger action. This I think is the essence of the Bret Ellis interviews too.
I am hoping to write more about unlocking performance and triggering athletes readiness (and willingness) to perform. This week Bret Easton Ellis and David Furner are unlikely but fascinating partners in starting that journey.
Photo Credits
One Conversation and a Half
Fire Wings

Understanding stories, connecting messages


Introduction
On 26 July the New Scientist carried news of research by Greg Stephens, Lauren Silbert and  Uri Hasson at Princeton University. New Scientist noted that “There’s now scientific backing for the old adage that when two people “click” in conversation, they have a meeting of minds. The evidence comes from fMRI scans of 11 people’s brains as they listened to a woman recounting a story.”
Research Findings
The abstract of the research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy indicates that:

Verbal communication is a joint activity; however, speech production and comprehension have primarily been analyzed as independent processes within the boundaries of individual brains. Here, we applied fMRI to record brain activity from both speakers and listeners during natural verbal communication. We used the speaker’s spatiotemporal brain activity to model listeners’ brain activity and found that the speaker’s activity is spatially and temporally coupled with the listener’s activity. This coupling vanishes when participants fail to communicate.

The scans showed that:

  • the listeners’ brain patterns tracked those of the storyteller almost exactly…
  • though trailed 1 to 3 seconds behind. But in some listeners …
  • brain patterns even preceded those of the storyteller.

The article quoted Uri:
“We found that the participants’ brains became intimately coupled during the course of the ‘conversation’, with the responses in the listener’s brain mirroring those in the speaker’s”. Listeners with the best overlap were also judged to be the best at retelling the tale. Uri noted that “The more similar our brain patterns during a conversation, the better we understand each other”.
Take Home


The Princeton research has some fascinating insights to share with coaches and teachers. In a mixed ability group it is interesting to note how each member of the group anticipates, stays with or misses a message.
Douglas Fields in his blog post about the research notes that:

Interestingly, in part of the prefrontal cortex in the listener’s brain, the researchers found that neural activity preceded the activity that was about to occur in the speaker’s brain. This only happened when the speaker was fully comprehending the story and anticipating what the speaker would say next.

The Princeton researchers found that there was no match between the brain patterns of the storyteller and the listeners, when they heard the same story in Russian, which they could not understand. Perhaps this is the equivalent of saying “They just did not get it.”
Photo Credits
Story Time at the North Library
Getting Coaching

Play and Playfulness

I have written a good deal about play and playfulness in this blog. In June I wrote about Sliding to Catch a Train and more recently wrote about Play and Display.

This morning I received an RSS feed from The Scholarly Kitchen with a delightful example of the play spirit central to Johan Huizinga’s play elements of culture (Homo Ludens, 1938).
The Scholarly Kitchen post took me back to Roger Caillois too. Caillois suggests that play is:

  • Not obligatory
  • Separate (from the routine of life) occupying its own time and space
  • Uncertain so that the results of play cannot be pre-determined and so that the player’s initiative is involved
  • Unproductive in that it creates no wealth and ends as it begins
  • Governed by rules that suspend ordinary laws and behaviours and that must be followed by players
  • Involves make-believe that confirms in players the existence of imagined realities that may be set against ‘real life’.

In Les Jeux des Hommes (1958) he identifies four play forms (competition, chance, role playing and vertigo) and places these on a continuum that extends from structured activities with explicit rules (games), to unstructured and spontaneous activities (playfulness).
This is The Schorlarly Kitchen post that prompted these thoughts!

This one is dedicated to the parents out there. In this recently rediscovered clip of Mary Carillo’s rant about backyard badminton, every parent can take a moment to recall a day like this, which has certainly occurred at your house or at a house near you. Best line? There are many, but my vote goes for, “Then you see Christopher Berg — and it’s always Christopher Berg”.

Mary Carillo demonstrates in this video some of the cultural universals of play and playfulness. The video started out as a run of the day report from the 2004 Olympic Games and evolved into an absolutely delightful improvised story about backyard badminton. It is a story that will resonate with any parent and teacher. (Please excuse the quality of the audio!)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZDn0U0w78k]
I thought it was a wonderful playful story about playfulness. It took me back to a remarkable experience my two children and I had in a park in Monmouth in South Wales in the mid 1990s. It was our first attempt to collect some conkers (horse chestnuts) in the park. We were happily throwing sticks at the conkers in the tree with very little success when I caught a glimpse of a policeman approaching.
Thinking we had broken some local bye-law we awaited our fate with trepidation. When the policeman got to us and uttered that time honoured line “Ullo, ullo, what’s going on here then?” We admitted that we were failed conker getters. I am not sure if it was the sad look on the children’s faces but the policeman decided to help us.
I have no idea what possessed him to throw his helmet into the tree but he did … and it failed to come down. Heroically he decided to throw his truncheon after it … and that got stuck too. At this point the children and I were desperately trying not to laugh but we were caught up in that uncontrollable fight with and enormous laugh trying to break out that sounds like a very large vehicle’s air brakes.
To his great credit the policeman did not give up and asked me to give him a bunk up into the tree to retrieve his equipment. I did so but to my great dismay he wedged his foot in the bowl of the tree. I am not sure if you have ever been in this situation but I wonder what message you would send on a police radio you are not supposed to use to request the fire brigade to extricate a policeman from a tree he should not be in retrieving equipment that should not have left his person.
Mary Carillo brought these memories back so vividly!
Photo Credit
Badminton (33)

The Occupational Culture of the Performance Analyst: Providing a Video Service

In the last couple of weeks I have been discussing an Honours’ project with a student at the University of Canberra. I have been encouraging him to think about researching the occupational culture of the performance analyst in sport. By coincidence I had just reviewed a paper about delivering a performance analysis service to a basketball team in Japan.
We have had almost two decades now of an occupation in sport that can be described as ‘performance analyst‘. Whilst I was discussing the project with the Honours’ student I was prompted to think about how little we share about the tacit knowledge of supporting and serving coaches and athletes with augmented information. Recent discussions of performance analysis as the practice of “recording, processing, and interpreting events that take place in training and/or competition in sport” are further stimuli to explore the occupational culture and community of practice.
Whilst searching through my electronic files to find material to share with the Honours’ student I discovered some pictures taken by colleagues at the Australian Institute of Sport. The pictures were of the video service set up for the 2005 ICF World Canoe Slalom Championships in Penrith, Australia.
As host organiser in 2005, Australian Canoeing provided a video service to competing nations. There were some significant logistical issues to overcome to provide this service. The aim of the team delivering the service was to provide an uninterrupted video feed. The service team comprised staff from the Australian Institute of Sport and the New South Wales Institute of Sport. It was a very young team. The video feed came into the raft shed at Penrith and was distributed to 30 end user points. We had a wired system for the video feed and to ensure minimal disruption ran a parallel back up system.

Given the distance from the furthest camera on the course to the raft shed we amplified all video signals. On the first day of competition the weather was so bad that we lost a number of connections and had to lay out new video lines. We used up a great deal of our redundant equipment in the first day and the proximity of the course to a Dick Smith store and a Bunnings DIY store saved us from running the event without any back up resources.
My role at the event was to oversee the team delivering the video service and to liaise with all nations requiring a video feed. It was a wonderful learning opportunity for me and the service team. My aim throughout was to offer an invisible service that provided uninterrupted augmented information for coaches and athletes. For the finals of the competition we provided a feed from the broadcast coverage of the event as an additional option for the nations using the video service.
Set up and testing of the video equipment for the event took three days. We managed to disassemble the equipment in one day. We kept a detailed inventory of equipment and did not lose one item at the event. We acquired a vast library of DVD, hard disk and DV recordings of the event that were used subsequently for coach education and development resources.
The Control Desk

Looking Out into the Room

Splitting the signals:

The view from the back of the room:

Down Time:

All of the service team have stayed in sport science after the World Championships. I am now searching for a picture of them at the event.
I hope this is the first of many posts about the occupational culture of the performance analyst. I see it as a way of exploring and sharing tacit knowledge. I like the way Wikipedia explains tacit knowledge:

  • While tacit knowledge appears to be simple, it has far reaching consequences and is not widely understood.
  • With tacit knowledge, people are not often aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust.
  • Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. Tacit knowledge consists often of habits and culture that we do not recognize in ourselves.
  • The tacit aspects of knowledge are those that cannot be codified, but can only be transmitted via training or gained through personal experience. … It involves learning and skill but not in a way that can be written down.

Five years after the World Championships it is interesting to reflect on the learning opportunities available at large scale events. It struck me at the time that such events offer a different scale of event to apply the principles we use in 1:1 services to coaches in training and competition environments.

Resilient Authoritarianism and Soft Power


Introduction
Last Thursday I was driving into Canberra and had the opportunity to listen to Richard McGregor’s interview with Margaret Throsby on ABC’s Classic FM. Richard McGregor is the author of The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers published in June 2010. I had heard an earlier interview with Phillip Adams too.
Both interviews left me with a desire to explore the combination of resilient authoritarianism and soft power as a leadership style relevant to sport contexts. Richard explored both characteristics in his interviews. His study of the Chinese Communist party provides enormous detail about the processes and outcomes of a distinctive, transforming leadership practice. This is a link to a talk Richard gave at the Lowy Institute.
Penguin Australia’s trail for the book is: “It is impossible to understand China without really knowing who is in charge. And this book tackles the subject head on. How did China’s Communists merge Marx, Mao and the market to create a new superpower? How can they maintain such a grip on power in the face of a changing world.”
Resilient Authoritarianism
A lot of the references to ‘resilient authoritarianism’ are linked to China. For example, Andrew Nathan (2006) points out that he describes China’s authoritarian regime as resilient “because it remains robustly authoritarian and securely in power”. He suggests that some signs of the regime’s resilience are:

  • Hu Jintao’s smooth succession to power in 2002-2003 and his consolidation of power since then.
  • The regime’s ability to discern problems in economy and society and to make policy changes to respond to these problems.
  • High levels of support for the regime in public opinion.
  • The inability of social discontent and political dissent to cumulate.

He adds that the roots of the regime’s grip on power include:

  • Economic growth has improved the welfare of most of the population, giving them a stake in the survival of the current regime as long as they continue to benefit from its policies and its stability.
  • The regime has scored real as well as perceived achievements in foreign policy, such as securing the 2008 Olympics for Beijing …
  • The regime maintains a variety of safety-valve institutions which, however ineffective they are, nonetheless offer dissatisfied citizens an alternative to opposing the ruling party.
  • The regime has been able to use repression to prevent the rise of any substantial political opposition.
  • The regime has managed the far-flung and complex propaganda system in such a way that the broad public perceives diversity and significant freedom in the media, while at the same time sensitive political messages are eliminated from the public sphere.
  • The Party has developed the ability to co-opt economic and social elites, so that it is “the only game in town” for ambitious persons.
  • The regime has the necessary policy-making systems in place to respond to economic and social change.
  • Crucial to the resilience of the regime is the elite’s will to power. The leadership hangs together.

Art Hutchinson explores the relationship between resilience and robustness. He notes that ‘resilient authoritarianism’ is:

a strange combination, to be sure, and in fact ‘robustness‘ rather than resilience may be a better term for the Chinese government. The former connotes sheer strength and durability; the latter is more characteristic of a system that’s able to bounce back seamlessly (or nearly so) from a wide array of unanticipated shocks and challenges. It’s a distinction many large organizations should take to heart–and many have.

He argues that the true resilience of highly distributed systems tends to triumph due to:

  1. Greater adaptability (they can deform in extreme ways without disintegrating altogether) and;
  2. The speed with which they can route around ‘failure’.


Soft Power
Joseph Nye (2008) points out that soft power is:

the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment. A country’s soft power rests on its resources of culture, values, and policies. A smart power strategy combines hard and soft power resources.

Ernest Wilson (2008) suggests that smart power is defined as:

the capacity of an actor to combine elements of hard power and soft power in ways that are mutually reinforcing such that the actor’s purposes are advanced effectively and efficiently.

It strikes me that attraction and advancing purposes effectively and efficiently are characteristics of good coaching.
Leadership in Sport


The discussion of authoritarianism and soft power in political science resonates for me with discussions about effective coaching. In writing this post I was taken back to Muska Mosston’s work in identifying and discussing The Spectrum of Teaching Styles. The Spectrum builds upon the premise that teaching behavior is a chain of decision making. Every deliberate act of teaching is a result of a previous decision.
Jonathan Doherty (2003) points out that Mosston’s ideas on the interactions between teacher and student have provided a framework for teaching physical education in different contexts all over the world. He notes that in the 1970s it was described as “the most significant advance in the theory of physical education pedagogy in recent history”. (For a recent discussion of the pedagogical approaches in the Spectrum see Sicilia-Camacho and Brown (2008). Jaekwon Na (2009) provides an example of the use of the Spectrum in the teaching of Taekwando. Shirley Gray (2009) and her colleagues look at the teaching of invasive games.
I see an important link between deliberate acts of teaching and the underlying approach to authority and control. Ian Pickup (2010) explores some of the factors that impact on teaching in his discussion of teaching young children.
Resilient behaviour in coaching for me is a fascinating mix of world view (big picture understanding) and pedagogical practice that frames deliberate acts of knowledge reproduction and production. In professional sport it requires a lot of political will too.
Richard McGregor’s insights provide an interesting guide as to how coaches might manage all three elements.
Photo Credits
Bank of China
Gentle Caress of Light
Coach 01

Play and Display


Two items this week have prompted me to think again about Gregory P. Stone’s distinction between play and display (American Sports: Play and Dis-Play, in Eric Larrabee and Rolf Meyersohn (eds.), Mass Leisure. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958. See too his discussion of wrestling, 1971).
The ABC reported that “Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade says he would not be surprised if AFL opponents were eavesdropping on his match-day coaching instructions.” The report notes that “While other clubs use more secure digital communications system that are encrypted, the Bulldogs have a cheaper analogue system, which Eade said needed upgrading.” Rodney Eade is quoted on the subject of technological vulnerability:

You know that it goes on, so I think as a club and organisation we’ve got to now work ways that it can’t be listened into. On grand final day, you’d hate to think it would cost you a game when a move was predicated and actually didn’t give you the advantage you hoped.


In a second report, the ABC noted that “New Zealand-born photographer Scott Barbour has been banned by the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU) from covering the All Blacks’ Bledisloe Cup build-up after he deliberately exposed the team’s game plan.” His image “of coach Graham Henry holding the team’s tactical move was reproduced in Australian media outlets.” The NZ Herald analysed the moves in detail.
The ABC report suggests that “All Blacks assistant coach Steve Hansen described Barbour’s actions as a “breach of trust”, saying he broke an “unwritten rule” by photographing the blueprint displaying moves from lineouts and scrums.” A TVNZ post quotes Steve Hanson: “With any breach of trust you take your time and talk about it. It’s not the end of the world. We will deal with that in our own way.”
Reading both these reports I wondered how these experiences help us clarify:

  • What constitutes fair play?
  • What role should (any) technology play in sport?
  • How skilful can we be in he art of off-field disclosure?
  • What role on-field deception should play?
  • Will the call for fairness off the field be reciprocated on the field of play?

Photo Credits
Listening to Podcasts on a Mobile Phone

Photographing the Photographer

Performance at Sea Level and at Altitude at the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa

I monitored the performance of teams at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. I was interested in goal scoring performance at sea level and altitude and summarised the data in Goals Scored at 2010 FIFA World Cup Venues.

Watching the 2010 Football World Cup took me back to the 1995 Rugby World Cup (RWC) in South Africa. I was a member of the Welsh Rugby Union’s management team at the 1995 RWC and was there as a performance analyst. It was the last tournament at world level before the professional rugby union era. Invictus dramatises some of the events at that RWC. It remains the only RWC tournament to be played in part at altitude.
I have revisited performances at the 1995 RWC and present some data here about points scoring performance at sea level and altitude. There were 32 games played at the 1995 RWC, 24 Group Games and 8 Knockout Games. The results from these games can be found here.
These are the data from the games played (averages with .66 and .5 are rounded up and averages with .33 rounded down):
Qualifying Stage: Total Points Scored Each Game
Sea Level (Groups A and B)

Points Scored
Venue Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Total Average
East London 60 58 56 174 58
Durban 42 47 66 155 52
Stellenbosch 45 – – 45 45
Cape Town 45 29 – 74 37
Port Elizabeth 37 38 20 95 32

Altitude (Groups C and D)

Points Scored
Venue Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Total Average
Bloemfontein 67 78 162 307 102
Rustenberg 89 72 40 191 64
Johannesburg 62 43 47 152 51
Pretoria 48 46 41 135 45

Note: Japan played all three pool games at Bloemfontein. New Zealand scored 145 points in the game against Japan. Cote d’Ivoire played all three pool games at Rustenberg and conceded 89 points to Scotland in their first game.
Knockout Stages: Total Points Scored Each Game
Sea Level

Points Scored
Venue Game 1 Game 2 Total Average
Cape Town 47 74 121 61
Durban 48 34 82 41

Altitude

Points Scored
Venue Game 1 Game 2 Total Average
Pretoria 78 28 106 53
Johannesburg 56 27 83 42

Qualifying Stage: Total Points Difference Each Game
Sea Level (Groups A and B)

Points Difference
Venue Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Total Average
Stellenbosch 39 – – 39 39
Port Elizabeth 31 16 20 67 22
East London 24 6 6 36 12
Durban 6 7 22 35 12
Cape Town 9 13 – 22 11

Note: only one game was played at Stellenbosch. Australia defeated Romania.
Altitude (Groups C and D)

Points Difference
Venue Game 1 Game 2 Game 3 Total Average
Bloemfontein 47 22 128 197 66
Rustenberg 89 36 18 143 48
Pretoria 28 36 3 67 23
Johannesburg 24 25 1 50 17

Note: Japan played all three pool games at Bloemfontein. New Zealand scored 145 points in the game against Japan. Cote d’Ivoire played all three pool games at Rustenberg and conceded 89 points to Scotland in their first game.
Knockout Stages: Total Points Difference Each Game
Sea Level

Points Difference
Venue Game 1 Game 2 Total Average
Durban 24 4 28 14
Cape Town 3 16 19 10

Altitude

Points Difference
Venue Game 1 Game 2 Total Average
Johannesburg 28 3 31 16
Pretoria 18 10 28 14

Literature
Sport Science support for rugby union performance was emerging in the mid 1990s. There is very little digital literature available on the support players received in the early years in the 1990s. From personal experience the biggest development was in strength and conditioning support. This situation was transformed by the professionalisation of the game after RWC 1995 and there was an explosion of interest in supporting athletic performance thereafter. 

Ronan O’Carroll and Donald MacLeod (1997) presented some findings on the Scottish rugby team that participated in the 1995 RWC (Scotland played all three of its RWC at altitude in Group D). Michael Hamlin and his colleagues (2008) note that “Repetitive explosive power (∼−16%) and 20-m shuttle performance (∼−3%) decreased substantially at altitude compared to sea level. Acclimatisation to hypoxia had a beneficial effect on sub-maximum heart rate and lactate speed but little effect on other performance measures. In conclusion, 1550-m altitude substantially impaired some measures of performance and the effects of prior adaptation via 9–13 sessions of intermittent hypoxia were mostly unclear.” (Some related articles here.)
Ross Tucker (2010) has provided further insights into playing rugby at altitude (see here also).

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The blog of Keith Lyons, an education technologist from NSW, Australia.
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