Gloucester Rugby are delighted to announce the renewal of their longstanding partnership with OPRO as the club’s official mouthguard supplier. The club are also excited to be able to use the cutting-edge technology of the PROTECHT system, embedded within an OPRO+ mouthguard, to support improvements in player welfare.

This relationship ensures Gloucester Rugby continue to enjoy the assurance of OPRO’s internationally renowned, custom-made mouthguards for all players.

OPRO are dedicated to bringing leading technology and safety to athletes at all levels and are the official mouthguard partner of more than 85 teams and associations, including England Rugby, Rugby Australia, New Zealand Rugby and 11 Gallagher Premiership clubs. They have twice received the Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation in recognition of their ground-breaking work in improving children’s and athletes’ protection.

The OPRO-Gloucester Rugby partnership brings with it the introduction of the next generation of intelligent mouthguards, OPRO+, embedded with PROTECHT’s state-of-the-art sensor technology, which accurately identifies and reports all head impacts received by players in training or competitive matches.

This ground-breaking initiative, nominated in two categories in the 2020 Sports Technology Awards, will tailor training in a progressive way to move towards match demands, enabling players to safely simulate the loads and intensity of collisions. As a club who pride themselves on player welfare, the PROTECHT system will provide the management team with a new source of data that can help to bring the players up to match intensity safely following the COVID lockdown. As one of the pioneers in the Premiership to use the technology, Gloucester Rugby again demonstrate their innovative and forward-thinking approach to the game and the care of the players in the squad

Alex Brown, Gloucester Rugby Chief Operating Officer, was delighted to extend the partnership with OPRO Sports.

“We are really pleased to extend our well-established partnership with OPRO and continue to be able to supply our players with industry leading mouthguards.

“Player welfare is always at the forefront of everything we do as a Club, and with this ground-breaking technology, we are now able to accurately monitor and rely on data developed by experts.”

OPRO Sports Marketing Director, Daniel Lovat, commented:

“We are delighted to not only extend the partnership but introduce PROTECHT’s cutting-edge technology, embedded in our OPRO+ mouthguards, to help enhance the welfare of the players and development of the game. We’re proud to have been an official partner of Gloucester Rugby for over a decade and look forward to continuing this for years to come”

Chris Turner, CEO of Sports & Wellbeing Analytics who have developed the PROTECHT system, added: “With the players currently faced with such a unique set of physical and mental challenges following COVID, we are proud to be a part of the efforts at Gloucester Rugby to support a safe return to play. Accurately monitoring the contact load will help Gloucester Rugby to make training even more specific whilst ensuring player welfare is a priority. Because we can feedback live to the pitch side team we are able to ensure that players are getting the perfect balance of contact in training to ready them for the return of the Premiership.

“This is performance through player welfare. We believe that we are able to support the team’s performance by supporting greater data-driven decision making.”

In addition to using its expertise to develop state-of-the-art, instrumented mouthguards, OPRO has continued to develop OPROtec, an arm of the business which originally produced sports protection equipment. In response to the COVID-19 outbreak and shortage of PPE in the UK, OPROtec has recently expanded to produce fully certified type II and type IIR face masks and visors at its manufacturing facility in Hertfordshire. The face masks are now available for businesses, retailers, healthcare institutions, sporting organisations and consumers to purchase.

For more information visit www.opromouthguards.com

To learn more about PROTECHT, visit swa.one

OPRO Renews as Official Mouthguard of Gloucester Rugby and introduces PROTECHT System

Related News