Skip to content
Home · Profiling
Instruments · CVMP · FVMP · NVMP · BVMP · HVMP

Profiling for serious athletes.

The CVMP (cricket), FVMP (AFL), and parallel versions for netball, basketball and hockey are structured profiling instruments built for senior school, pathway, and adult athletes. They measure the eight psychological dimensions that, in fifteen years of pattern recognition at elite level and twenty years of high-stakes operational work before that, separate the athletes who compound from the ones who stall.

The profile does not predict who makes it. It shows you where the work is.

A self-serve Profile tier is also available as the entry-level read, the same architecture, taken online in twelve to fifteen minutes, $79. Begin the Profile →

What these instruments are actually for

Most psychometric tools in sport are either generic personality measures translated into sporting language, or marketing-driven questionnaires with little underlying structure. The CVMP and FVMP are neither. They were built specifically by the practitioner who uses them, drawing on fifteen years of assessing cricketers and footballers at elite level and working from established sport psychology frameworks.

The output is not a pass-fail. It is not a selection tool. It is a structured read of where a player currently sits across eight psychological dimensions, a credibility assessment of how honestly they answered, and a pattern analysis that identifies the interaction effects most likely to shape how their next year plays out.

Used properly, the profile does three things: it gives the player a language for what they already sense about themselves, it gives the coach a defensible structure for conversations that used to be instinct-only, and it gives the practitioner a map for the individual work that follows.

What the profile measures

The same eight dimensions sit underneath both instruments. The items that measure them change sport to sport. Cricket-specific items for the CVMP. Football-specific items for the FVMP. The underlying architecture is the same.

01 · CD

Contest Drive

The appetite for direct one-on-one contest. Wanting the ball, wanting the strike, wanting the match-ending moment.

02 · TO

Tactical Orientation

How a player thinks about the game situation. Reading the context. Choosing the right option rather than the instinctive one.

03 · AR

Adversity Response

What happens after a mistake, a dismissal, a turnover, or a run of outs. The capacity to recover and re-engage.

04 · IA

Identity Anchoring

Where the player's sense of self sits. Tied to the scoreboard, or anchored in values and behaviours that the scoreboard cannot touch.

05 · GB

Growth Beliefs

Whether ability is seen as fixed or developable. How feedback is received. How discomfort in training is treated.

06 · CB

Connection & Belonging

The player's read of their role in the group. Capacity to contribute to team cohesion. Willingness to make others better.

07 · PC

Process Commitment

Attention to the controllable. Preparation standards. Whether behaviour under pressure follows a trained routine or defaults to the scoreboard.

08 · VC

Values Congruence

Alignment between the player's stated values and their visible behaviour. The gap between "who I say I am" and "who I act like under pressure."

What the profile actually produces

The output is not a single number or a personality label. It is three distinct layers, each of which does different coaching work.

Layer one · Functional orientation

A normalised score on each of the eight dimensions, zone-classified red / amber / green / gold. This is the base layer: where the player currently sits across the architecture. It is the easiest part of the profile to read and the easiest part to misuse, because the scores on their own do not tell you what matters most for this player at this moment.

Layer two · Self-awareness

A count of responses that demonstrate willingness to acknowledge tension, imperfection, and honest self-assessment rather than choose the flattering option. High self-awareness in a profile is a leading indicator of coachability. Low self-awareness is a leading indicator that the surface scores should be treated with caution.

Layer three · Response credibility

An embedded credibility check. Cross-section consistency checks. Flat-perfection flags (green on everything with zero honest flags is usually a tell). Tension-absence flags. Overall credibility rating: Clean, Caution, or Review. This is what separates the instrument from a self-marketing exercise.

Underneath those three layers sits a fourth output: cross-dimension pattern detection. Eight specific interaction patterns (e.g. Fragile Performer, Capable Avoider, Compliant Operator) that emerge from combinations of dimension scores. The patterns are where the profile stops describing and starts predicting.

Built for senior school and pathway

Senior school programmes

First XI and First XVIII squads at independent schools with meaningful senior programmes. The profile sits inside the annual schools programme as the data foundation that anchors the season's coaching work.

Pathway and rep cricketers and footballers

State academy, under-age rep, private school First XI, AFL-Academy-adjacent players. The genuine pathway conversation where psychological architecture is the differentiator.

Individual athletes in development

Players and their families who want a structured read of where the psychological work is, and a coaching plan built off the back of it. Profile plus debrief plus follow-up sessions.

Coaches wanting a defensible read

Head coaches and Directors of Cricket / Football who rely on instinct to read their squad and want the instinct cross-checked against structured data before making a squad call or having a difficult conversation.

The profile is not a selection tool, a diagnostic instrument, or a substitute for clinical assessment. It is a coaching instrument. Used by a trained practitioner, for specific coaching purposes, inside a broader programme of work.

What actually happens

  1. Assessment. The player completes the 52-item questionnaire online. Around 20 minutes. Forced-choice pairs, trade-off scenarios, behavioural evidence items, and an embedded credibility check. The items are sport-specific (cricket for CVMP, football for FVMP).
  2. Scoring. The practitioner reviews the raw data, the dimension scores, the credibility flags, and the cross-dimension patterns. The full profile is generated.
  3. Debrief with the player. A structured 45 to 60 minute conversation walking the player through what the profile is showing. The player leaves with a language for what they already half-knew, and a clear read of where the work is.
  4. Coaching plan. From the debrief, a structured follow-up: individual sessions, integration with the coach's training environment, and review points. The profile is not the destination. It is the starting point.
  5. Re-assessment (optional). Longitudinal tracking. The same instrument, re-run six to twelve months later, shows the direction and rate of change. This is where the profile earns its keep over time.

What the profile is not

A few things worth being explicit about. The CVMP and FVMP are practitioner-built instruments drawn from established sport psychology frameworks and fifteen years of pattern recognition at elite level. They are not formally psychometrically validated in the academic sense. They have not been through an independent reliability-and-validity study.

What they are is defensible, structured, and built by someone who has read thousands of cricketers and footballers at elite level and has seen which psychological patterns actually shape how careers play out. Used by the practitioner who built them, inside a broader coaching engagement, they produce the kind of conversations that generic instruments do not.

If a formal validated instrument is what you need for a research setting or a regulated context, these are not the right tools. If a practitioner-grounded read of a player's psychological architecture, in service of coaching, is what you need, they are.

Frequently asked

How long does the assessment take?
Around 20 minutes for the player. The full profile generation and debrief preparation takes the practitioner another hour on top of that.
Can players fake their responses?
The instrument is built with embedded credibility flags and cross-section consistency checks precisely because some players will try. The credibility rating catches most of it, and "Review" on the credibility layer is itself useful information to have in front of you.
Who sees the results?
The practitioner and the player. For the schools programme, aggregate squad-level patterns are shared with the head coach and Director of Sport, but individual full profiles stay between the player and the practitioner unless the player explicitly consents otherwise.
Is it a selection tool?
No. It is a coaching instrument. Using a psychological profile to make selection calls misreads what the profile is for and breaks the trust that makes the honest answers possible in the first place.
How young can a player take it?
The instrument is built for senior school and pathway, so around 15 years old upwards. Below that, the items and the self-reflection required are not age-appropriate.
How often should it be re-taken?
Six to twelve months is the sensible window. Too early and the changes are noise. Too late and you miss the coaching leverage of a mid-year re-read.
Can a player take it without being part of a school programme?
Yes. Individual engagements are available. The profile plus debrief plus a short follow-up block is the most common private-client package.

Also relevant

Enquire about profiling

Schools, individual players and families, and coaches wanting a defensible read of their squad. Get in touch and I will walk you through a live anonymised example before you commit to anything.

Email Rob →