Parameter Selection in Sport Modelling: Touch Football

Touch football is one of the most extensively played sports in Australasia. In Australia touch is played by over a quarter of a million registered touch players, half a million school children and numerous casual players. Whilst New Zealand has less touch players than Australia, it is still the largest participation sport within this country with over 230,000 New Zealanders playing the game. Previous work has been published in 2010 on the potential for modelling touch football as a Markov Chain and the expansion of this model to many sports sharing similar structures. Applications of such a model for practical use were discussed. State sequences within the model were developed for use within a purpose built Fortran program. Selection was made of model parameters as well as identification of expected model outcomes. Appropriate parameters during model development allowed model fitting, using comparisons of differing outputs (generated by altering random seed values) in conjunction with expected model outcomes. On model testing many parameters produced data as expected however displacement parameters produced statistically different results from expected values identifying areas for future work. Parameter developments cultivated an enhanced framework for modelling the sport of touch football as a series of Markov States.