A sporting vision?

Grey day: Eric Cantona with the offending grey strip

Could it be that Manchester United's ace card is, in fact, an eyesight expert? By BBC News Online's Jonathan Duffy.

When, a few years ago, Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson blamed his team's shoddy performance on their grey strip, the soccer world wore a smirk of incredulity.

But while it sounded like the footballing equivalent of leaves on the line, Sir Alex later revealed he had been acting on the advice of Dr Gail Stephenson.

It was not a one-off consultation. Recently, it was revealed that eyesight expert Dr Stephenson, of Liverpool University, had been working closely with the championship-winning Old Trafford team.

For several seasons, she has led a secret project to improve the vision of some of the team's top players.

Second sight: Sir Alex was forced to re-think the team strip

Sir Alex has been reluctant to talk freely about the project - fearing it might affect his team's competitive advantage.

But he did confess that his players had been seeing an eyesight specialist for several seasons. "She is obviously doing something right. We are very pleased with the effects her work seems to have," he told the News of the World.

He revealed that sports vision scientist Dr Stephenson made a weekly visit to the team training ground and tried to "develop a player's 3D vision".

On the ball

And it's not just the likes of David Beckham and Roy Keane who stand to benefit from her treatment. The Subaru World Rally Team and the Scottish hockey team also have Dr Stephenson on their books and she has even helped football referees.

"Sportsmen and athletes often have to react to a changing situation very quickly. They have to make a snap decision," she told BBC News Online.

Subaru's Richard Burns leads the World Rally Championship

"The idea of vision science is to improve the way they process the information [they see]."

Dr Stephenson has developed systems based on her training as an orthoptist, although she will not divulge any details.

Don Loran, chairman of the Sports Vision Association in Britain, says sportsmen and women display higher skills of anticipation and recall - both crucial in fast-moving ball games.

Many budding athletes have slight visual defects which would go undetected in normal life. The job of the sports vision doctor is to rectify these shortcomings.

Baseball on board

Sports vision first took hold in the United States in the 1980s and is now widely seen as a means of improving sporting performance. In particular, major league baseball teams have signed up to the philosophy.

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One of the all-time biggest hitters of home runs, Mark McGwire, of the St Louis Cardinals, is an advocate of sports vision, says Dr A I Garner, executive director of the International Academy of Sports Vision.

On this side of The Pond, Mr Loran says a handful of professional football clubs in addition to Manchester United, have experimented with improving visual awareness.

Young players tend to benefit the most, he says.

Mr Loran speculates the Manchester United team are learning about aspects such as:

• depth perception - judging the position of an object in space;
• hand-eye co-ordination - how quickly a player can catch an object;
• hand-foot co-ordination - how quickly they can kick a ball;
• contrast sensitivity - how to pick out objects in bad light, and
• glare recovery - how quickly a player can focus after exposure to a bright light.

Poor contrast sensitivity was the culprit in the case of Manchester United's "jinxed" grey shirts. Dr Stephenson told Alex Ferguson at the time that the shirts blended with the crowd.

Bright red, United's home strip, was generally visible against a crowd background over a 120-degree radius, she said. But the pale grey strip was detected over only 40 degrees.

Mr Loran, author of a 1995 book called Sports Vision, acknowledges there are some who doubt the science of sports vision.

He concedes: "We can train them to improve the skills they lack, but there is still an on-going debate as to how that training affects their performance."