Whole, half and peak characteristics of women's international flag football match-play during the 2024 world championships

This study quantifies and describes the full, half and peak running characteristics during women's international flag football match-play. A total of 54 player match observations were taken from eight players, consisting of four offence and four defence. A repeated measures observational cohort design was used. Commonly used microtechnology variables including total-, high-speed- (3.46–5.29 m·s −1 ), very high-speed- (5.29–6.26 m·s −1 ) and sprint-distance (>6.26 m·s −1 ) alongside high acceleration and deceleration (>2 m·s −2 and <-2 m·s −2 , respectively) distance and count is documented. Whole, half and peak game characteristics were calculated for offence, defence and players who played both ways. On average, the whole game total distance for offence and defence was 1627 ± 386 m and 1514 ± 343 m respectively. For offence and defence ∼16% and 9% of total distance was high speed running (3.46–5.29 m·s −1 ) and ∼3% was very high-speed running (5.29–6.26 m·s −1 ) and <1% was covered by sprinting (>6.26 m·s −1 ). The median number of accelerations and decelerations per match was 21 and 16 respectively for offence, and 8 and 10 for defence. The whole-match average speed was 29.8 m·min −1 for offence and 27.0 m·min −1 for defence. Average speeds increased as temporal durations decreased to 5 s (average speed = 294 m·min −1 ). Findings highlight the intermittent nature of flag football, with players required to cover distance at various speeds and frequently change speed throughout. This is the first study to highlight the running characteristics of flag football tournaments. Such data can be used by coaches and performance staff to design appropriate and informed training stimuli to help optimise athlete performance for future tournaments.