Susanne Ellens

What would it be like to be a student growing up in the Netherlands with a passion for football and technology, but ultimately know you will eventually need to make a decision to follow one path or the other? Then, twist this a little and consider for one moment how would it feel if you found a way to combine both your passions and somehow find yourself not only travelling to Melbourne to study, but then becoming part of a FIFA research project? For Susanne Ellens, studying at Victoria University has offered the perfect combination of these two worlds, but also a chance to experience the different football cultures in this city close up.

Football is:

Okay, Suus, tell me how your love of football started.

Susanne Ellens:

Well, my family is pretty sporty. So, if we're at home and there's something sport-related on TV - it doesn't really matter what sport - we're always watching it. Although, we are watching soccer most of the time. I’ve had soccer in my life since I was a child, my dad likes to watch the team of his city play where he grew up and my oldest brother was hanging out with my cousins who were mad soccer supporters. So, when I grew up, I was like ‘Yeah, this is fun! I want to hang out with you guys.’ In Europe, soccer is pretty big and everyone watches it together. You will get a whole family and a whole neighbourhood together to watch it. When Holland played in the World Cup for example, people would put a screen outside on the streets or we invited all of our friends to our house to see Holland play. So, that's actually how it started, as a kind of social thing to watch it with others.

Football is:

So, did you ever play it?

Susanne Ellens:

I play it socially. So, not with a club just with friends. Whenever we were free we’d say ‘Hey, let's do something, let's grab a soccer ball and go outside’ and you would play soccer with all your mates from your whole street.

Football is:

So, growing up where sport is such a part of your lifestyle, how did you find a way of combining sport and your passion for soccer into what you're doing as an adult?

Susanne Ellens:

That’s a good question actually. Soccer’s always been a part of my life. At high school, I was just watching it and playing socially. Then when I got to university, I discovered that I could combine my love for technology and sport, so I started investigating sport-related things. One of my lecturers at uni saw I liked this and got me involved in research in wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis. Since then I never stopped with sport research and that got me into my current research in soccer and technology software.

Football is:

So, when you went to uni, was your intention to do analysis in sport?

Susanne Ellens:

During my Bachelor’s in human kinetic technology, there were three different main areas - sports science, rehabilitation (ortheses and prosthesis, related things) and technology that was everything from building 3D printers to programming things. At first I really liked the technology part. I built a 3D printer with my dad and programmed lots of small things. And then my world changed when I discovered that a lot of technology is involved in sports science research. So, I could combine two of my favorite things.

Football is:

So, you’re still in the Netherlands at that stage when you started really focusing on your one direction with sports science and technology, at what point did the link with FIFA develop?

Susanne Ellens:

That was in a bit of a later stage. At first I was in Holland. Then I came to Victoria University. So, from Holland, I came to Melbourne and I firstly started in Australian football. Well, as I'm a Dutch person, I didn’t know a lot about Australian football. So, I needed to analyse the technique of Australian football. I had no idea what's good, what's not good, what type of movements they do.

Football is:

When you first started working within AFL, as somebody who doesn't know the sport, how did you view it? What did you think about it from the perspective that you were working from?

Susanne Ellens:

It was so weird. I never ever saw a game of Australian football before I came here. I read some articles about it and then I came here and I thought it looked like rugby but it’s different. It's kind of like soccer as well, but it’s different. And the oval-shaped ball, when I saw it, I concluded that there was a lot of technique involved in kicking, same as with soccer. I always think that rugby is more of a power sport. You have the ball and you go, go, go and also need technique of course, but it's slightly different. That's pretty cool. That’s also where I started my research about kicking in AFL because it's an important aspect of Australian football, the only way to score a goal and most common form of passing a ball. 

Football is:

So, how did you get into this?

Susanne Ellens:

It was during a day at Etihad Stadium. It was with FIFA and by this time, I was doing Australian football stuff. But my supervisor needed people who had knowledge about the technology they were going to use that day so he asked me to help, So, I was there and I helped them and then at the end, they asked me to write some code scripts. They liked what I did and wanted to keep me at this uni.  Afterwards, I went back home to finish my Bachelor’s degree and by then I was not really sure if I was coming back. My supervisor arranged a scholarship for me when I was still home. I was like ‘Oh, okay, I really like it’ and I want to keep working in this space, soccer. I always loved soccer and I know soccer. I know what type of movements they do, how the game is played and that's actually how I ended up there. So, it all started at Etihad.

Football is:

When you became first immersed in that world, were you starting to already do comparisons to the different kicking techniques in the two sports?

Susanne Ellens:

Yeah. It was because in Australian football, you have an oval-shaped ball so as soon as you drop it, you mostly kick with the top of the foot. So, when I was investigating that in high-speed videos, you see the people kicking in really detailed vision. In soccer it's mostly with the side of foot that you’re using and the movement you're making with the legs is very different. Then I was also looking at the difference in the build of a player. In AFL, the players are more muscular and are really tall. Soccer people are actually mostly average height if you compare them with AFL players. Then I realized it makes sense that AFL people are usually tall, they are running a lot, so being tall helps with covering long distances. Whereas soccer is married to fast movement, quickly turning and stuff like that. So, they’re more responsive and shorter.  

Football is:

So, when you got to the point where your supervisors who work with FIFA asked you to work with them. What changes to your research did you have to do to apply it to soccer?

Susanne Ellens:

In AFL, I was creating a classification system to classify the movements of a player during a game and I had an INU unit - that's a small device with an accelerometer and a gyroscope they were wore during a game. Once it was over, they gave it to the coach and the coach runs my software and he can see, oh, they did 60 kicks, 12 drop punts, and what distance they ran.

This technology can also be applied to soccer. So, when the FIFA opportunities arose I thought I can do this in soccer as well, only the movements are way different. So, I needed to adjust my codes a bit and get new data for it so then at the end, the coach can run it as well to track, say, a headshot, inner foot kick, outer foot kick, tackle, stuff like that.

Football is:

So, they're wearing little pads when you're doing the‑?

Susanne Ellens:

It's only a small device, like this big, like I would say a 50 cent piece, and it's on the side of their leg.

Football is:

Okay. So, just from that, they can -- wow.

Susanne Ellens:

Yep. And then they're just running the whole game so at the end the coach can get an indication of what you're doing. For example, say we're both standing in the same position - we’re talking soccer now, I know more about soccer - and you’re in attack and he sees you make a lot of assists and only half the number of assists here and he’s like, okay, that explains why the ball is always more on this side because he barely makes opportunities elsewhere. So, then he can speak to you. He would say we need to get the ball more to this guy, or you need to train on your assists. So, that's a different part of how applies to soccer. They currently do it based on sight, so this gives them more in-depth views.

Football is:

So, as someone who has loved the game your whole life, when you watch a game now, how do you perceive it? Are you watching it with the technical head or can you still watch the game in the grandstand and enjoy it?

Susanne Ellens:

Oh, sometimes, I'm just watching it and then I guess I do lots of placement analysis, so where the players are on the field. Then I see a game and I see that the players are screwing up their whole position. All the people next to me are like, ‘What are you looking at? They’re just playing right.’ I say ‘No, no. Look at the red dot, look at the red dot.’ It's like oh, yeah, that's pretty stupid actually. Yeah, everyone's almost focusing on the place where the ball is and then your head follows the ball. But I’m always watching the whole field, taking more of a broad overview.

Football is:

If you were embedded in a professional club, what do you think is the advantage of having somebody that's got this technology?

                                                             

Susanne Ellens:

The things that people do are not always visible to the human eye. As soon as you apply technology to it, it allows you capture the movements of people playing on a field. They're doing lots of stuff that coaches will probably miss or will never see but as soon as you implement data and technology into it to monitor the people, or videotape them during the whole game or analyze more in detail, you will see way more than a coach normally sees. So, actually I'm broadening the view of the coach, making it easier to understand the players, and what’s going on.

Football is:

Yeah, I suppose it informs them postgame of where the deficiencies are‑

Susanne Ellens:

Exactly! A coach can only look at one player at a same time. You can’t watch everyone on the field. That’s way too much to ask, just for one person. So, then you can see at the end what the players were doing. In the best-case scenario, the coach can go to his computer post-game and print out kind a spreadsheet or whatever and can thoroughly analyse what's going on with his players.

 

Football is:

So, when you were choosing universities to study at, how did you end up here?

Susanne Ellens:

I was in Holland. Second year of uni I think, I went to do an internship abroad, so I went to Calgary in Canada. This had nothing to do with technology at the time. I went back home and then the next year I could do an internship again. But I thought, I already went to Canada where there was a great human performance research lab. So I wanted to do my next internship at a good uni as well, but this time I wanted to do research into something sport-related with a technological focus. So, I went online. I ended up at this university in the Institute of Sport and Exercise Science. It was really appealing but it was only a three-month internship. So, I went to my supervisors back home and I asked them if it would be possible to do one year over there and make it an extensive internship instead of just doing three months? I was the first person ever who asked for this at my university so it took a long time to convince them and arrange everything. But In the end, here I am!

Football is:

When you got here, you committed to 12 months, to a country -- you’d never been to Australia?

Susanne Ellens:

No. I've never been this far from home. It's literally -- if you drill a hole through the earth -- I look it up one time online -- you would pop out more or less in Spain. So, it's almost on other side of the world.

Football is:

Has being away from your parents and your family been difficult? After all you can’t just jump on a one hour flight to get home…

Susanne Ellens:

It's actually alright. They are far, of course. Sometimes you really miss them. It’s like, oh, I just really want to see them but it's alright. I've got lots of friends here so it feels like family. They are like family for me and I Skype with my parents every Friday before I go to the gym, because that’s a convenient time for Europe that's like, well, 8.00pm back home. Then I will call my parents on the bike with a camera in front of me on my bike. Then they see me and we talk the whole way about what we’ve done with our weeks and so.

Football is:

Yeah, so, technology is part of everything you do?

Susanne Ellens:

Yes, yes. It is. They call me a tech nerd here at uni, because as soon as there is a tech-related issue, it’s like ‘Suus, Suus, do you know how to do this on the computer?’ or ‘Do you have this cable? What do I need to do with this?’ So I usually help out.

Football is:

What was the biggest challenge when you got here as far as settling in and the culture and I guess your knowledge or your expectation of the country?

Susanne Ellens:

The biggest challenge? I think it was keep on schedule with my university back home. I was doing lots of stuff here and then I also needed to do things for my thesis back home, and I had other reports I needed to complete as well. So sometimes I lost track of what I was writing for reports back home and what I was doing here. Luckily my friends back home were a great help and reminded me of almost everything! So, that was I think the biggest challenge, to keep everything sorted.

Football is:

Now that you’ve well and truly settled in here and doing your research, where do you hope it will take you?

Susanne Ellens:

Europe, and ideally a soccer club there because they invest a lot of money in sports science. So, for example, Barcelona is really big with sport science and I’d love to work at Ajax, it’s the club I follow back home. So I would love to work with one of them and help them improve their soccer skills where possible, and make analysing it much easier.

Football is:

Last question which is my standard: Finish this sentence, football is…?

Susanne Ellens:

Football is. Okay, now I need to say it in proper English. Soccer is the link for me between my love for sports and technology. It lets me combine my love for sport and technology and maybe even bring some new technology into the sports world. Yeah, that’s best thing that’s happened to me actually, to get into this world!