It’s a scene that looks like it could be ripped straight from the pages of the script for an international spy movie.

Just a few minutes before the start of another Valour FC training session, assistant coach Damian Rocke is spotted opening a giant black briefcase.

Inside, and carefully held in place by black foam padding, are GPS tracking devices labelled with the names of each Valour FC player. The devices are then inserted into the back of an over-the-shoulder harness apparatus the players wear under their training kits for each day of training.

There is a clandestine feel to the whole thing, as if it should be shrouded in secrecy. Indeed, the only thing missing from the scene is an evil character with a villainous cackle.

There’s a method to this, of course, as over the course of the next 90 minutes or so, Rocke and the rest of the coaches use the GPS devices to track live every move of each Valour FC player on the pitch by measuring a number of metrics, including the distance covered during a session, to the number of sprints a player makes and other load factors.

There is no escape from the information the device provides and any player who tries to take a moment in the practice to gear down will soon discover the GPS system has revealed it.

“But the moment you might think they are spying on you or something, that’s just not what it’s for,” said Valour FC defender Skylar Thomas with a grin. “I just play the game I play. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I’m wearing a GPS, I’m going to sprint faster or go that extra five yards.’ That doesn’t really make sense to me. It’s do what you normally do, they track you and then give you feedback.”

These systems are now commonplace with professional soccer teams across the globe, and come with the goal of providing another layer of information coaches can use in terms of practice planning and managing the health of their players.

“When we’re building out a season plan, we want to make sure the players are reaching certain thresholds of activity,” explained Rocke, who in addition to his extensive coaching experience, also holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University. “Any experienced coach will have a feeling for the amount of activity they are getting out of a session, but it’s hard to really measure that in any objective way. This takes the subjectivity out of it.

“If we’ve got a game on a Wednesday and that’s 100 percent intensity, then we know the day after will be a recovery session and it’s going to be a much lighter mode and we’ll ensure that with the GPS. We’ll get live data and once we hit a threshold we could end the session. It’s a long preseason and we don’t want players having 100 percent of intensity from Day 1 right through the first game because they just wouldn’t last, they’d break down at some point.

“We try to use our experience with how sessions should look, but overlay that with actually measuring it. This isn’t to say that the GPS is the be-all and end-all. It’s just a tool to help us.”

A tool to help the coaches and players, but also one that can be used to motivate as well. Valour FC boss Rob Gale has taken now to getting print outs of the training sessions totals and pinning them up in the Valour FC clubhouse.

Yes, peer pressure can be a powerful thing.

“You’ve got to squeeze everything you can out of these lads, absolutely,” Gale said. “The beauty of that is we can watch a session and you can say anything you like. A player has an opinion – and I’ve been there as a player who has an opinion on how hard you performed or how well you did – but if you can show the empirical evidence of the data and you mix that with the video, then what are you going to say?

“It’s, ‘You thought you were trying really hard yesterday and you sprinted harder than anyone else, but somewhere down the line there you were 10th on the chart. Is everything OK? Were you carrying a piano? What happened?’

“It’s just useful. It’s not meant to trip a player up or make fun of him or dig him out, necessarily. It just helps that you’ve got more objective evidence than just your subjective opinion.”

Rocke said the plan is for Valour FC to use the GPS tracking system throughout the season, especially as the Canadian Premier League campaign unfolds and more players will be nursing the bumps and bruises that come with real games.

“It’s really a useful tool for us,” said Rocke. “And frankly, we still need to work with it ourselves more to really understand how to maximize our use of it. But we’re excited to be able to have this kind of technology.”