Australia's 600,000-plus touch football players are set to become guinea pigs, the University of Canberra housing a research project that aims to unlock the secret of boosting life-long participation rates in sport.
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Scientific research of a sport where some social participants tape their numbers to T-shirts with masking tape may seem overkill, but UC and Touch Football Australia believe it could provide data important to raising Australia's sporting and activity rates.
UC has continued its aggressive push to become Australia's leading sports university, establishing the Australian Centre for Touch Football Studies.
It sounds scientific. And while there will be an element of studying the physiology of the elite level of the game, such as physiology and GPS data, there is even bigger interest in tracking social players.
"We can learn a lot about the drivers of why people participate in sport, if we start to be leading edge in that area we set ourselves to be one of the biggest sporting communities in Australia," said Touch Football Australia chief executive Colm Maguire.
The NRL is watching the research, too. Touch football has already strengthened its presence in Australian sport by forming a partnership with rugby league, NRL bosses Dave Smith and Todd Greenberg joining TA's board last month.
"There's great synergies between the sports and how bring them together, particularly the participation base," Greenberg said.
"Every professional sport needs to have a funnel that brings its talent base forward."
UC is now home to the ACT Brumbies and has taken control of WNBL team, the Canberra Capitals.
Assistant professor of sport management Anthony Beaton said his ambition was to conduct a three-to-five year national study of participation.
"We want to be the leading sport university in the country," Beaton said.
"Touch football is played by a broad demographic from five-year-olds to 70 years, by both genders, so it's a really good opportunity to study sport from a participation perspective about keeping people active for life.
"One thing we're really keen on exploring is how touch football seems to do a really good job of attracting and retaining female participants at the ages when most other sports are experiencing big drop-offs. That's a really important area because female participation in sport is something we really need to work on as a country."
