Southport Sharks set to hold sports technology innovation challenge

A Gold Coast sports club is leading the way in sports technology innovation and is now opening its doors to further enhance safety at all levels of the game. From advanced undergarments to a game-changing head injury app, see how one club is leading the sports technology charge.

Southport Sharks star Zac Foot testing out the BrainEye app. Picture: Supplied

The Southport Sharks are teaming up with sporting technology companies in a bid to enhance sports at all levels.

The club is holding a sports technology innovation challenge this month which will give Queensland start-up companies the opportunity to collaborate with the Sharks over a six-week period.

“So at the Sharks, we’re really opening our doors to bring value to start-up tech companies to highlight some of the future innovation pieces, but also for us, we’ve got a really big mindset vision on becoming one of the safest sporting programs in Australia,” Southport VFL high performance manager and head of sports tech Matt Palmer said.

“We’re just trying to run a nice little competition that, is a safe place for the start-up tech companies to test their products in our programs.”

Southport has proven to be central to the development of sports technology companies in recent years with their partnerships in helping to develop products made by Fempro Armour and BrainEye.

“Fempro, the female protection garments, they started testing and polling their program in our club with our women’s program,” Palmer said.

Southport Sharks QAFLW side. Picture: Highflyer Images

“Our female players tested them through training and match simulation environments so that they gave feedback to the company and then the company took that feedback on board and changed and altered and developed their product.

“So now that the product has had, two or so years of testing and trialling within our programs to now be a product that’s well developed and now out on the world stage within female contact sport.

“That’s a really proud piece for us to partner with and help them on the journey.

“And then from BrainEye, it’s a concussion app, which essentially you can use if we have any head trauma or eye contact from a brain injury.

“It’s a 60 second test app … we don’t need a doctor to facilitate that test, to know if we have an issue with our brain health and needs a referral.

“We’re really proud to be involved in our testing and that launch of that product.”

Along with improving player safety through innovative technologies, the club hopes this new challenge could lead to an opportunity to reduce the impact travelling has on players throughout the season.

“Two of the problems that we’re trying to solve is with the VFL, we travel every second week and we travel more than any other team in the competition,” Palmer said.

“So recovery is a really important piece to the puzzle for us to continue to perform.

“With our final series last year, we went back-to-back to Melbourne for four weeks and hopefully that happens again this year.

“But we’re hoping that we can find a product that can help improve our recovery from a post-game and our travel to help our travel place, that will essentially improve our performance the following week.

“So that’s something I’m really excited to find and also, any new different materials, or smart materials or different trackers and different things that we may not have thought about yet that might be out there is probably one of the most exciting pieces to help us improve our performance.”