THEMING

 

As a coach you've probably read of AFL head coaches using theme's for games and even seasons.

In past years Damian Hardwick used a Band of Brothers theme for one of Richmond's premiership seasons based off a Bruce Springsteen song, and only last year Craig McRae used the Take the Steps theme with Collingwood again to a premiership win. Luke Beveridge at the Bulldogs is also partial to a gameday theme.

These notes come this article on how to go about theming, whether that's for a single game, a string of games, or for an entire season.

• Why do you want to theme?
• What are you trying to dig into?
• What do you feel you’re going to get out of theming?
• Find a story that you belong to
• Why is this a story that’s going to reasonate with you and your players?
• How is this going to strike with the group you’re working with?
• How does it capture what you’re trying to achieve?
• Consider some of the landmarks of the story – the key individual's and events – and how are you going to tell that story?
• You don’t have to do it chronologically
• Your players might know the story so you've got to find angles/aspects they haven’t heard before, or are lesser-known
• Totems are physical objects that can help bring the theme to life where Richmond players were each given rocks to wrote their why on and Collingwood had the ladder that they built throughout the season
• Language is powerful in theming and it needs to be driven by everyone, not just the head coach
• It gives a higher purpose of why you’re playing
• It can help maintain long term motivation