Virtual reality simulations of football (soccer) free kicks suggests placing a defensive wall can block a goalie's view and hamper their performance - and simulations might be useful in other sports too.
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Article Title: "A goalkeeper's performance in stopping free kicks reduces when the defensive wall blocks their initial view of the ball"
Funding: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme FP7-CIG under grant agreement n° [334202], awarded to Joost C. Dessing, and from the European Research Council under grant agreement n° [210007], awarded to Cathy Craig. The work is part of a PhD project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklowdowska-Curie grant agreement n° 754507. Alan Cummins's contribution was also funded through a project within an Impact Accelerator Award from the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/R511602/1), awarded to Queen's University Belfast. The funders provided support in the form of salaries for authors and purchasing of equipment but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the 'author contributions' section.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Although Professor Craig is now the CEO of INCISIV Ltd., a commercial entity (founded in May 2018), INCISIV Ltd. has had nothing to do with the design of our study, has not funded it nor is it set to gain financially from the results. None of our results can be commercialized by this company. The affiliation with INCISIV Ltd. does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243287
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PLOS ONE