GPSports assists Nani in return to match fitness. (July 2010)

GPSports assists Man U's Giggs to regain fitness. (April 2010)

GPSports tracking West Tiger's star recruit, Lote Tuqiri. (April 2010)

BIG Brother will be watching Sale Sharks this season as part of new head coach Mike Brewer's mission to transform the Edgeley Park club's fortunes.

The Kiwi has brought in some revolutionary state of the art technology to the Aviva Premiership club in a bid to monitor and improve each player's individual progress and to also prevent injuries from wrecking his plans ahead of the new season.

It means there will be literally no hiding place for the players at Sale's Carrington training base with each squad member wearing a special Global Positioning Satellite tracking device as Brewer and his coaching staff monitor and mentor the Sale's player's progress.

The cutting-edge technology, developed by GPSports Systems, monitors information beamed back from satellites in space, and has already in use at such football giants as Chelsea, United and Real Madrid as well as rugby giants the All Blacks and former Heineken Cup winners Leinster, where Brewer was forwards coach.

But Sale have become only the second English rugby club, after champions Leicester, to implement the system in England.

It hasn't come cheap and the club have appointed a new analyst, Dan Lynes to work with Nicola Cahill, to help get the most of the GPS.

However, Brewer believes it's value will quickly become apparent.

"In a lot of training sessions you are not entirely sure how hard those players are working be it with their heart rate, their acceleration or whatever, but the GPS system can tell us," said the former New Zealand star

"It will allows us to build into our sessions a high level of intensity. And it will tell us if some players are hitting the mark we want and if some are falling a bit short and maybe need top-up sessions.

"It will take away all the guesswork from our training.

"But the second aspect is that they actually monitor force. If a player is favouring one leg or one hip or knee it will measure the displacement and the way the athlete is running.

"That means we can start picking up on things before a soft tissue injury occurs.

"So if you've got guys who are renowned for hamstring or calf injuries, we can tailor things accordingly as the GPS will monitor every step, every function, and every change of direction they take.

"The cost is expensive as far as a capital cost - about two thirds of the cost of what we would term a squad player.

"But if it can keep more than one player on the training field and make them available to play, then its paying for itself.

"We've got 36 units so everyone in the first team squad will be monitored. They include heart rate monitors and I know from using them at Leinster that if we noticed someone's rate was way above where it should be there was a 150 per cent chance it would lead to an injury.

"That meant we took the player out of training and so we reduced soft tissue injuries by about 50 or 60 per cent. It all about paying for itself and the well being of the athlete."

BIG Brother will be watching the Wallabies over the next fortnight as coach Robbie Deans prepares to revamp his squad for the massive challenge posed by the upcoming Tri Nations.

There will be no hiding as each player will wear a GPS tracking device to record the training they do.

Players will work in groups at their home bases with Wallabies strength and conditioning coach Peter Harding and other coaches travelling around to check progress.

"This time last year we didn't have the GPS but when they returned it wasn't hard to see who had done the work and who hadn't," Deans said.

"It's no different, it's just that we are able to be a bit more scientific."

Arsene Wenger will track his players from SPACE next season to prevent injuries from yet again wrecking the club’s title bid.

The Arsenal boss has been without up to a dozen players at any one time this season, including defender William Gallas and Robin van Persie. Now Wenger intends to use satellites to monitor his stars’ susceptibility to injury in a bid to rectify the problem.

Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis explained: “If there are things we can do we will do them. For example, we’ve introduced a GPS system this year for the first time.

“This is tracking literally from satellites in space, the training movements on the training field of every player.

“It gives you a lot of information. It tells you not just how far the players are running and how fast they are running and what levels of intense activity they have in training.

“It also measures ­something called ‘the load’ – and this is literally the amount of time a player’s foot is on the ground while he is running.

“You can see if you have a player coming up to a risk of injury in a subsequent game because you can see two things in general: one is that their work-rate comes down in training and secondly their ‘load’ increases. In other words, their foot stays on the ground for longer when they run.

“When you are feeling good and feeling active you are more on your toes. When you’re not, you’re more on your heels. That can help you to predict when players are in a dangerous situation.

“Unfortunately, it takes a while to build that record to get the full benefit of that system.

“So we are unlikely to see the benefits really coming through until the second half of next year,” he said. Arsenal and GPSports>

"Manchester United star striker Wayne Rooney using GPSports technology during training. GPSports assists EPL & RFU.

Tech wizards, GPSports, who have developed the SPI Pro, an innovative GPS based athlete performance tracking system, powers the training of Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Leinster, The RFU, the All Blacks and the Wallabies.

The detailed information gained from this technology has helped to reduce injuries, develop game and position-specific training plans, and boost squad fitness.

"Our key clients how have the lowest injury rates in the league". Says GPSports Managing Director, Adrian Faccioni. "This is due to the ability to accurately monitor the loading for every player." If a player's position requires them to do a lot of lateral movement or sprints in a game, coaches can train them accordingly. Our next product, the SPI Pro X, records data a 15 times a second, so we'll soon know every blade of grass covered."