Falkirk manager Peter Houston admits there is no hiding place for his squad this season after they were each allocated their own GPS tracking system.
The players wear the devices on match day and Houston is able to analyse how far they have ran in a game.
Former Scotland coach Houston admits the data backs up his judgement from the sidelines after he compared information from last Saturday’s 1-0 Betfred Cup defeat to Stirling Albion and Tuesday’s 3-0 victory over Elgin City.
Houston, whose side travel to St Johnstone tomorrow, said: “We’ve introduced GPS systems that they wear on their jersey and what my eyes sees from last Saturday was proved right with the stats we downloaded.
“They’re a decent bunch of guys and they couldn’t have been accused of not working as hard as the opposition in any game last season but they weren’t at it at Stirling.
“They put it right on Tuesday and the results from the GPS were outstandingly better with a number of them in terms of the distance they ran.
“Your eye tells you a lot but sports science has a place and it’s another thing I’ve introduced since I came in because that backs my judgement. They’re happy to wear them and they think it’s positive.
“GPS is not cheap to buy but we’ve got them in. We’ve got people trained up in how to analyse the data and it means physically I’ve got a sheet of paper in my hand telling me things, and I’ve actually got an app on my phone to see the distances they’ve run. We compare it game to game.
“When I first came in there were not any gym sessions in place, we didn’t have a facility to use. They’ve all got their own individual programmes now and we do a lot of fitness testing with the University of Stirling.
“We’ve not got a ful -time sports scientist but we all muck in to learn in a positive sense.”
