IN WHAT is believed to be a world-first for a football code, Collingwood and the Brisbane Lions will have vests fitted with radio transmitters tomorrow night to enable the clubs and Channel Ten to receive live information about speed, endurance, collisions and heart-rate of players.

While Global Positioning System technology is used by most AFL clubs, tomorrow night's game is the first in which clubs — and the television broadcaster — have been allowed to use radio technology during the game and have up-the-minute access to the information.

The AFL has granted Collingwood, Brisbane and, perhaps most significantly, Channel Ten permission to use the same extraordinarily detailed measurements during its broadcast.

Four Collingwood players and five Lions will carry the radio transmitters under their vests, which means television viewers — and clubs — will see:

■Distance covered and top and average speed of those players.

■G-force, which measures the impact of their collisions, including their biggest hits.

■Heart-rates of two players from each club, with the average and highest rates covered.

■Number of collisions for those nine players and the average force of their hits.

■A breakdown of how much jogging, running and sprinting the measured players do.

Channel Ten has hired Essendon's conditioning coach, John Quinn, to explain what the information means.

The four Collingwood players under live surveillance will be Paul Licuria, Nick Maxwell, Harry O'Brien and Guy Richards.

Brisbane's five measured players will be Jamie Charman, Tim Notting, Jed Adcock, Robbie Copeland and Daniel Merrett.

Like a number of players from both sides, Brisbane champion Jonathan Brown is willing to wear a GPS vest, but has declined to share his personal information with a live television audience on the apparent grounds that he does not want opposition teams to have such details.

Licuria, Maxwell, Adcock and Copeland are the only players who will have heart-rates monitored in the live broadcast.

Collingwood conditioning coach David Buttifant, who has worked closely with Ten, its football producer AFL Films and the Sportsdata — the Sydney company running the trial — said the Magpies would be able to receive the information on the bench, and this, in turn, could be relayed to the coach's box. The same set-up applies to the Lions.

Buttifant said some players were "apprehensive about how it (the GPS data) could be interpreted", adding: "Most clubs would be reluctant about declaring their capabilities."

Buttifant said it was the television coverage that prompted the reluctance of many players: "They don't want to divulge their personal data to opposition."

While the entire competition uses GPS-type technology, especially during training, to ascertain players' capacities and manage injury risks, permission to use the radio transmitters that make it possible for the recorded information to be relayed immediately on match-day has not been allowed.

Buttifant said television viewers would be surprised by what the trial revealed about particular players. "They'll be blown out of the water," he said. "I think the public will be very receptive."

He said Licuria had been chosen as a high-endurance athlete, while O'Brien was simply an all-round "very good athlete".

Sportsdata's Andrew Moufarriage, the main organiser of tomorrow's experiment, said the AFL had gained a break on rugby league and rugby union by having GPS tracking live during a home-and-away game.

"'This is a world first for measuring speed, acceleration, G-force and total impact (live in a broadcast)," he said.

He said every AFL club, without exception, wanted to use the GPS technology with the radio transmitters that made it usable during games.

Under current regulations, clubs can only record the data that is recorded via the vests and use it for research after games. A limit of 10 players per club are permitted to wear the vests.

Buttifant said the most relevant information from Saturday night would probably be "work to rest ratios" because it would give the clubs an indication of a player's fatigue. "Decrease in velocity would be an indicator as well."

Similar live information about heart-rates and average speed has been seen in broadcasts of the Tour de France.