A Numbers Game

So last game of the season and, as mentioned yesterday, last game ever for some tomorrow, so one might assume that everyone wants to put on a good show. That might be the case, but it would seem that there is a school of thought that practice is for the coaches’ benefit and not an integral step to team success. We had hoped to have more than the 11 that turned up to practice, which was further compounded by only 4 of those being backs (p.s. I’m predominantly a backs coach!).

 

I decided to go against our initial plans of running through the existing plays to fine tune lines and timing. Instead I introduced a new (to them) way of choosing and managing support lines. A few years ago, I had a coach who was keen on running attacking ‘diamonds’ and although it made perfect sense to me, the squad at the time didn’t really get it. It always seemed to be a training drill that never transferred to a change in game day thinking.

 

This transition from drill to game play is an issue that we seem to encounter week-in-week-out. For example, we can go through a period of team rucking drills or mauling drills against a tackle shield to focus on form and timing of support. However when the tackle shields are taken away and the practice becomes more open, many players can’t transition to choosing whether a maul or a ruck is the most appropriate option! It’s not a lack of skill, because they’ve spent 25 minutes proving they know how to perform the tasks, so why can’t they just do it. This takes me back to an important point in my first post – it is easy to forget that these things are not intuitive, as coaches we have to remember that we were not born with the ability to make such decisions.

 

What has that little digression have to do with the new ‘diamond-running’ drill of last night? Well, the 4 blank faces staring back at me after my initial explanation of the concept reminded me that just because it makes sense in my head, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything to these relative newcomers to the sport. Thankfully, when I stripped the ‘rules’ of the drill back to their key components and objectives, they all understood the why behind it all. This is easily half of the battle, and very encouraging when they can already identify game situations where it would help them be more efficient and effective.

 

So the idea behind diamonds is for a lead runner to have an option left and right, i.e. a team mate in a better position who can progress up the field. As the pass is made, the rear of the four reads where the potential gap is and moves up to one of the support positions i.e. left or right of the new lead runner. The initial ball carrier then becomes part of the new diamond, more often by dropping back into the rear position. (must work on best way to draw diagrams on here!)

 

Now this is where I have a problem with the diamonds that my coach proposed. The initial ball carrier dropping straight to the back tends to result in a fairly stilted, inflexible running pattern as the diamonds continue. The natural sequence is for the ever changing ball carrier to pass right, then left, then right etc, which flies in the face of what I try to encourage our backs to do. We need to get used to using as much of the space as possible, so flooding the direction that the play is moving in until the space is no longer useable. This fluidity is not encouraged if the ball receiver moves into the top-center position of the diamond. So, after discussing the pros and cons, a small change saw the ball receiver continuing in her channel with the support moving around her.

 

To my surprise and happiness, the girls immediately fashioned more of a circular motion to continue the diamond moving up and across the pitch. There was a definite dawning recognition of the benefits of this approach, and visible comfort with more efficient, structured support lines. 

Only problem is, that was only 4 of the players involved tomorrow. Worse still, 2 of the four are seniors, playing their last game!