CALDY fans who miss out on the action at Paton Field can now see exactly what happened by watching match highlights and video interviews on the club website.

The videos – which go live on Wednesday on www.caldyrugby.co.uk – are another first for Caldy, currently leading National League Three North, the club’s highest league position.

Director of rugby Tony Atherton said Caldy already videos its games, with help from students at Liverpool John Moores University.

He said: “Every club in the national leagues has to video its games and provide a copy to the opposition, for help with coaching and in case a player is cited and the incident has to be investigated.

“We use the video footage as a coaching aid and showing highlights was a natural extension of that. Hopefully our supporters will enjoy watching them and we can keep winning to give them a good show.”

Atherton added that being able to re-watch games has proved a tremendous boon to the club’s coaching staff, thanks to an analysis system already used by Liverpool and Everton, as well as other Premier League teams.

“The game is videoed and we receive a copy of that on DVD, but we can also request that anything we want is highlighted too.

“For instance, if we want to watch all the scrums, or how a particular player takes the ball into contact, the students at John Moores can get that footage and put it together, so it will be available when we press a button,” he said.

“The coaches have weekly video analysis sessions, sometimes involving the whole squad and sometimes just with one or two players, if we feel they would benefit from seeing something again.”

Atherton added: “Being able to show them an incident, as opposed to going from memory, allows us to praise good play or iron out mistakes. Quite often they take home their own copies of the DVDs, to study further.”

Caldy fans should certainly enjoy their viewing if the club’s current unbeaten run in the league – six games and counting – continues.

However Atherton is at pains to stress the club is merely meeting their pre-season expectations at the moment.

He said: “Our aim is to be in the top four at the end of the season and so far we are on target for that. However we have some tough games coming up against Nuneaton and Fylde especially.

“After the next month or so we will have a far clearer idea of where we stand, but things are looking good for us so far.”

NEXT GAME: Nuneaton v Caldy, National League Three North, Saturday.