Computational Method for Optimal Attack Play Consisting of Run Plays and Hand-pass Plays for Seven-a-side Rugby

Abstract

Providing explanatory information during broadcast of team sports is becoming important to make rules, plays, tactics, and developments easier to understand for viewers, particularly for beginners. Against this background, this paper presents a computational method for selecting the optimal attack play for a try, considering run and hand-pass plays. In this method, attack plays consisting of runs and hand-passes are simulated from the current player position and speed data based on motion models for each player and the ball. We then evaluate the simulated attack plays. The optimal attack play can be obtained using the branch-and-bound algorithm based on the evaluation results. In this study, the proposed method is validated using four synthetic formation examples of seven-a-side rugby as an initial validation. Displaying the optimal attack plays computed using the proposed method can help viewers understand developments in games more easily.