The north Wales-born Lyons died last week in Australia, where he had been battling a brain tumour for some time. He was 68.
An educator and sport scientist who specialized in the observation and analysis of performance in sport, he was one of the earliest pioneers of analysis in sport and the author of the first book on the use of video in sport.
He played rugby in the amateur days for Loughborough College, London Welsh and Rosslyn Park and represented North Wales against three international touring teams. He inevitably progressed into coaching and was heavily influenced by the great coaches, Ray Williams, Tony Gray and Jim Greenwood.
He did not stop at rugby and he also coached international women’s lacrosse and was Welsh National Coach for white water canoe slalom.
In 1991, he was appointed as the notational analyst for the Welsh Rugby Union and supported Welsh national coaches, Alan Davies, Alec Evans and Kevin Bowring. This made him one of the first officially recognised performance analysts in world rugby.
“Keith’s knowledge and intellect were always so impressive, but it was his personality and character that shone through. He was one of the kindest, gentlest, most caring and positive people with such a wonderful sense of humour,” said Bowring.
“His support and encouragement, often over coffee and carrot cake, had a significant influence on many high-profile coaches in many sports. He was an extraordinary human being whose compassion, humanity and kindness will be remembered.”
A ‘critical friend’ to so many top level coaches in many sports, Lyons’ opinion was always cherished and respected. Andy Flowers, Peter Moores and Paul Farbrace in cricket and Stuart Lancaster and Rob Baxter in rugby are just a few of the more recent coaches to have benefited from his expertise and insight.
His experience of sport and physical education led him to think about the systematic observation and analysis of player, teacher and coach behaviour. This combination of experiences in teacher education and coaching framed his professional practice in notation and performance analysis.
He started notating real-time performance in rugby union games in 1978 and by 1980 he was teaching courses in match analysis to students in the Human Movement Studies degree at St. Mary’s College. At that time, he was able to use some of the early domestic video cameras to record rugby union games for lapsed-time analysis.
Throughout the 1980s he provided analyses of performance to club and international rugby union teams. In 1992, he set-up and established the Centre for Notational Analysis at what was then Cardiff Institute of Higher Education.
His aim was to work with sport organisations to adopt real-time and lapsed-time analyses of performance in training and competition environments. Early clients included the Welsh Rugby Union, the Football Association of Wales, the Football Association, Great Britain Hockey, the Welsh Lacrosse Association and the Welsh Canoeing Association.
The Centre worked to support the British Lions rugby union tour of South Africa in 1997, provided a video service for the International Federation of Women’s Lacrosse Associations at the 1997 World Cup in Japan and serviced the South African football team at the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France.
“Keith started with a video recorder that was kept in a broom cupboard in B Block at the Cyncoed campus. Now there are 30 work stations occupying most of one floor and the course he started has earned a global reputation for excellence,” said Dave Cobner, the former Dean of Sport at Cardiff Met who worked on a number of projects with Lyons.
“He was an innovator, a world leader and a wonderful enthusiast. He has left the richest of legacies at Cynoced and will be sorely missed by so many people in so many different sports.”
Lyons moved to Australia in 2002 to take up a position as the founding co-ordinator of Performance Analysis at the Australian Institute of Sport. He was appointed Professor of Sport Studies at the University of Canberra in 2009 and retired in 2013.
More recently the RFU and ECB combined to engage Keith on a ‘learning journey’ project with some of their top coaches. He mentored 10 professional rugby coaches and 10 professional cricket coaches from 2013 to 2017.
His ‘Letters from Australia’ and face to face meetings stimulated learning, developed cross-sport connections and provided excellent learning and development through his ‘critical friend’ approach. The relationships lasted well after the programme ended.
“What a man. He only called me after a loss which was when I really valued his support. He really made me think and it was only weeks after a conversation that I would then understand what he was talking about!” said former England assistant cricket coach, Farbrace.
The Welsh Rugby Union offers sincere condolences to Keith’s family, wife Sue, children Beth and Sam and grandchildren Ivy and Jolyon, and his many friends around the world.
