A garage in Galashiels, a 56-year-old former skills coach, and a coaching-tech category usually fought over by the likes of Apple Fitness+ and Wimbledon. GSI Performance walked into the 2026 Smarter Sports Awards earlier this month and walked out with Smarter Coaching Systems honours, beating a global shortlist with a Borders-built range of contact and collision training kit now in use across 25 of 32 NFL franchises.
The story is bigger than one trophy. Over the last five seasons, World Rugby has capped full-contact training at 15 minutes a week and the NFL has squeezed padded practices inside its collective bargaining agreement (CBA, the contract that governs the working conditions of every player in the league). That has created a market for kit that lets coaches replicate collisions without the bodies, and a Scottish micro-firm with 60 training aids and one founder now owns the coaching system around it.
The Award and the Galashiels Origin Story
The Smarter Sports Awards are run by the STA Group and were broadcast live globally on 13 May 2026. The category GSI won sat beside honours for the DFL with AWS (Amazon Web Services, the cloud arm), Wimbledon with IBM, and a Judges Award for Apple Fitness+. The full 2026 Smarter Sports Awards winners list places the Galashiels firm in a 17-company class spanning broadcast, motorsport, fan platforms and venue tech.
Richie Gray, the company’s 56-year-old founder and a former Scotland skills coach, captained Gala Rugby Club to the Scottish Cup in 1999 before stepping into coach education and consultancy. The first prototype came out of his home workshop in 2010, the company launched the following year, and the catalogue has grown each season since.
The judges’ citation on this year’s submission was specific. GSI, they wrote, had reshaped the way contact sport is coached, moving the discipline beyond tradition and repetitive live drills into a far more precise model. The winning entry was built around the firm’s Five Fights Framework, a tackle-progression methodology that the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS, the body that writes high-school rules in the United States) adopted alongside the NFL in 2021.
- 2010 the first contact-sled prototype was built in a Galashiels home workshop
- 60 training aids across six product categories ship from the same Borders base today
- 25 of 32 NFL clubs now run the firm’s tackle, breakdown and scrum equipment in some configuration
- 1999 the year the founder lifted the Scottish Cup with his hometown club
Why Contact Time Got Rationed
In June 2021, World Rugby issued new training-load guidelines that have since reshaped professional preparation. The headline number was a recommended ceiling on full-contact work, with controlled-contact and live set-piece sessions capped separately and at least one zero-contact day required each week. Almost 600 elite players were consulted before publication, alongside performance, medical and conditioning specialists.
The NFL had already moved in the same direction. The CBA caps padded practices at 14 per regular season, 11 of which must come inside the first 11 weeks. Once the 17-game schedule begins, training-camp pads run no more than 16 sessions, with no more than three in a row, and a head-coach fine of $100,000 plus a $250,000 team penalty for a first violation.
The medical case underneath the rules is straightforward. World Rugby’s own research found that while match injuries are sharper per minute, the sheer training volume means 35 to 40 percent of all season injuries occur away from match day. The league’s most recent concussion data show a 17 percent year-on-year drop in 2024 to a historic low. That is the gap this catalogue was built to fill.
World Rugby’s 2021 weekly ceilings, summarised:
- 15 minutes of full-contact training per week, spread across two days
- 40 minutes of controlled-contact training per week
- 30 minutes of live set-piece work per week
- At least one day per week with zero contact of any kind
From the Collision King to a 60-Piece Range
The first Collision King prototype came together in 2010, after the founder stepped back from playing and into a portfolio of coach education and consultancy work. The sled, designed to replicate breakdown body position under live load, took the Technical Innovation award at the 2011 Rugby Expo in London and was inside national programmes inside a year.
Fifteen years later the full GSI catalogue spans six categories: tackle performance, contact and collision shields, football performance, breakdown equipment, return-to-play sleds and scrum. The Wrap and Grip Tackle System, first issued to the Miami Dolphins for the 2016-17 NFL season, sits inside that range. A youth-grade Football Performance line now ships into the American high-school market alongside the professional kit.
| Measure | 2010 / 2011 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Product range | One sled prototype | Sixty training aids across six categories |
| Headline customer | Gala Rugby Club | Twenty-five of thirty-two NFL franchises |
| Major award | Technical Innovation, Rugby Expo | Smarter Coaching Systems, Smarter Sports Awards |
| Coaching content partnerships | None | World Rugby Tackle Ready and Breakdown Ready, NFHS Five Fights, USA Football Advanced Tackle |
The Brotherly Shove Cameo
Gray’s profile in the United States arrived through the Eagles. Ted Rath, Philadelphia’s director of sports performance, had worked with him during a 2016 consultancy at the Miami Dolphins and brought him in to look at tackling. Offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland intercepted the booking and asked him to study the tush push instead.
The play, the quarterback sneak Philadelphia turned into a near-automatic short-yardage weapon, was converting at better than 95 percent on fourth and one inside two yards. He spent days breaking it down frame by frame, examining pre-snap alignment and body position on both sides of the ball. The conclusion was unsubtle: the only available defence required linking, which the NFL rulebook does not allow defenders to do.
The arrangement was meant to stay quiet. NFL consulting work runs on an unwritten code that names stay off the record. The cover broke in 2023 when Eagles centre Jason Kelce mentioned a Scottish guy on his New Heights podcast, and the consultant’s identity was in print inside a week.
Coaching at the top level and having studied the methodology of collisions in sport, put me in place to stay ahead of the curve.
That line, delivered to the BBC after the Smarter Sports win, captures the through-line. The same study habit that produced a working prototype in 2010 produced the tush push diagnosis in 2023 and the Five Fights coaching content sold today.
Where the Customer Base Sits Now
Three distinct buyer layers carry the catalogue today, and each was a separate channel to open.
Inside the NFL Roster
The Miami Dolphins were the first NFL franchise to put a full GSI system into a regular-season programme, taking the Wrap and Grip kit through the 2016-17 campaign. By the BBC’s reporting this month, 25 of the league’s 32 sides are running the firm’s equipment in some configuration. Two of the early adopters the founder names publicly are the Denver Broncos and the New York Giants.
Adoption inside the league has tracked the CBA’s contact restrictions almost in lockstep. As teams lost padded-practice days, technical accuracy on tackling moved from “drilled on the field” to “drilled on the sled”, and franchises that wanted current-frame technique without the bodies had a narrow shortlist of suppliers.
The College and High School Layer
The college system has been the firm’s fastest-growing channel since 2019, when USA Football’s Advanced Tackle System co-launched with the firm. Two years later the NFHS adopted the Five Fights Framework alongside the NFL, opening a high-school channel that now produces standing orders alongside the professional purchases.
That layered approach matters commercially. Pro contracts give credibility; college and high-school volume gives stable revenue. Few specialist equipment makers manage to sit inside both at once.
Inside the Governing Bodies
The methodology business sits underneath the equipment business. The firm’s Tackle Ready coaching module launched globally with World Rugby in June 2021, followed by Breakdown Ready in 2022. Those two programmes now define the technical content that governs how elite players, polled in World Rugby’s own consultation, train into the contact area.
That is the moat the Smarter Sports judges flagged. Selling a sled is one transaction; embedding the coaching syllabus around the sled is a multi-year relationship that the sport’s governing body has effectively endorsed.
The Galashiels Question
The headcount remains tiny by any measure of its category. The founder and his wife Lisa still run the company from the Borders, and he has fielded the relocation pitch repeatedly.
“I’ve been told many times that we are going to have to move away from Galashiels and the Borders as it’s too small, and relocate to one of the big American cities, but I’ve never had a problem with working from where I call home,” Gray told the BBC. “We’ve managed to take on the world so far from Galashiels. If you get your business model and plan right, you can work from anywhere.”
The Smarter Sports trophy will sit on a shelf in the same workshop where the first prototype was built. He has no plans to move it.
