The pace of the game has definitely sped up for the time being although I suspect by rounds 5 - 6 coaches will have gone to work to slow it back down in an attempt to gain more control of different game variables.
In the meantime though, let's enjoy the show.
GWS completely stifled anything the Hawks wanted to do on Saturday afternoon, and with some clearance dominance (rare for GWS), we were able to witness what their team defense can actually look like when they're not defending from deep in their defensive 50...and their mid 50 trapping was very, very good.
The Dogs looked like they would continue the trend of not being able to front up against the big teams and even with Brisbane being +46 in disposals, +13 inside 50's, +6 in clearance and +47 in marks, what certainly looked like a Brisbane win by the stats, was turned away by the Dogs' back 6 when they really needed it with Lobb, O'Donnell, Khamis, Freijah, Jaques and Budarick managing 24 between them.
After the breakneck speed of the 1st 4 games, last night's boundary-fest was not the greatest watch. Both teams defend with the ball via low-risk ball options with a whopping 239 total marks between both teams - 223 uncontested!
The Pies have a system that allows for creativity via the Diacos Brothers and De Goey but when the Saints needed some flair in the last quarter, they couldn't make the shift but that's a staple of Ross Lyon-coached teams.
Today we look at:
GWS Team Defense x 2
Brisbane Kick Out x 4
Dogs Creating and Utilising the outnumber Advantage
That would have blown out a little bit more after the Blues skipped out to a 22 point lead after the 1st 2 goals of the 3rd quarter.
Enter McInerney, Heeney and Gulden with those stats for the 3rd quarter reading
Disposals +72, Contested Possession +40, Uncontested Possession +36 and the score +61!
21 clips from this game in 3 videos with the themes being Carlton getting overcommitting and getting stuck at contest, Sydney creating length to provide space in front of the immediate play to transition forward via handball and/or run and the huge difference in running power between both team's personal.
As normal the full analysis is part of a level 1 membership ($9/month) but I will post 2 of these videos from below to show what contest looks like in 2026 and it's a huge shift:
VIDEO #1
Sydney Kick Out
Sheldrick Not Continuing the Handball Chain
Carlton Kick Out
Wicks Not Continuing the Handball Chain
Gulden at Center Bounce Clearance
Sydney 666 Connection
Gulden Overlap
VIDEO #2
Carlton at Center Bounce + Chaos Play
Sydney Creating Space to Transition with Speed
Gulden Overlap Creates the +1
Carlton Going Corridor Without Being Set Up for It
Marc is at Collingwood VFL but is a high-performance tennis coach by trade with Austin and him having done this in a tandem for a while and it showed in their delivery.
This was again focusing on using CLA to drive how to you design your training activities which I've also written about extensively, so it was right up my alley.
My favourite nugget from this was Austin's framework of concept and skill where you need to be able to label both and if you can't then the training activity is probably not representative enough of the game and won't contain enough game information to transfer to games.
I'll touch on that in the 4th training activity presented below.
Austin went in to how when he was at Essendon and they tried emulating the Richmond chaos handball/surge game and this was what they used day 1 to introduce it:
2 DEFENDERS IN
A transitional handball activity with the constraints of time and space being progressively decreased for the offense as more defenders come in:
INSIDE TO OUTSIDE DIAMOND
A congested-driven activity that requires the offense to move the ball quickly and cleanly to the outside players to get the number advantage with the number players in such a tight area constraining time and space a lot for the offense, yet the defense needs to also adjust to having more players to cover as the outside players join the fray:
INSIDE TO OUTSIDE OPEN PLAY
Over a bigger area, this deliberately and specifically positions players from both teams to start with and then it's perceive and act for every player from there. I'll just add that if you only train in tight spaces where there isn't time to think and act, but simply to act then players will find it hard to perceive, think and act when they have the time to do so:
FORWARD PRESS DEFENSE LINE
Let's go back to the concept and skill framework from earlier.
In this training activity the concept is forward press defense and the skill is closing space effectively.
Going deeper on the concept, the why is to create a turnover as close to your goals as possible also recognising the triggers of when to use it which is usually once the first defender presses then the rest trade up an opposition player as well. Other triggers are the opposition receiving the ball facing our goals, a high/loopy handball receive or a fumble/loose ball.
The skill of forward press defense is how effective you are at closing space and then directing the player to an angle that will disadvantage them.
We're talking powerful acceleration into small/tiny steps to decelerate + angling the ball carrier towards the boundary line or another teammate coming into assist
What concepts you want to train up is the easy part but you really need to go to work on the skills required to carry it out repeatedly in the heat of battle.
In the end it weas a big but fruitful weekend and it should be mandatary for coaches and parents (especially dad's) to attend these typers of things in my opinion to increase the barrier to coaching which is THE number 1 reason for kids dropping out of football at any age and the sooner clubs realise this, the better.
This past weekend I attended the 2026 AFL Victoria Coaching Forum with countless other local men's, women's and junior coaches from all over at the MCG.
Should you attend in future?
Yes.
Sitting still is essentially going backwards.
I did a lot of the practical session's so and I didn't take any notes - this is all from memory so it's bit scattered but here's what I took from it.
COACHING GAMEDAY - WOMEN'S (SHAE SLOANE - HEAD OF WOMEN'S FOOTBALL MELBOURNE AFLW)
I only got the back end of this one as I was late getting there but she was covering the different aspects you need to address in the lead up to, and on. gameday.
This included what you want to do at contest and then on offense and defense.
The simplicity of it all might have surprised a few with the "line to goal" positioning mantra used on both phases of play to ensure they go the long way to goal on defense and that we go the quickest way to goal on offense.
Yes, it's predictable to them but it's also predictable to us (Geelong in the 2000's hitting the hot spot 300 times a game yet couldn't be stopped!) and makes perfect sense with Melbourne's past marking power inside forward 50 (Zanker, Harris, Hore).
Things to cover on offense include line to goal, best position (draw defender/cut to teammate), take grass, leading patterns, knowing what to do if you see a spare for either team, kick to advantage.
Things to cover on defense include line to goal, best position, 1st to move/transition focus, patterns (corrections), footwork, spacing.
On gameday you'd have 2 - 3 points of focus for contest, offense and defense depending on that game's KPI's:
Contest x narrow focus, 1st give, support/come back to the ball
Offense x attack line to goal, deep entries, roles in blitz/forward half play
Defense x defend line to goal, 1st to move/happy feet, roles in counterpressing.
I can add to this as the slides come through later but I'd most local footy clubs focus far too little or far too much on this part and simply need to find the balance of information v under/overload to keep retention as high as it can be.
Shae has been there and done that in women's sport having played high level volleyball and AFLW and now high up in AFLW administration.
Mon Conti has also excelled at football and basketball, often with both season's overlapping and playing both sports at the top level at that the same time so how she navigated that was interesting to hear - especially lying to her basketball coaches that she was also playing footy!
Daisy is 1 of 1 and she could literally talk AT me all day but she's as human as the rest of us, going into detail of how she was unsure of her relationship with a player last year and the worry it caused her and then how she dealt with it.
Her perspective on all things football, and especially women's, is like no other person in football at the moment that has the platform like she does and there should be more of it.
LIVE LIFE WHOLE - MEG DICKINSON
Live Life Whole is an online platform by women for women involved in sport that has gathered specialist form many areas of women's health and have popped them all in 1 space.
I've written about some of these issues before and with a lot of men coaching women's teams, this at least gets them thinking about more than just football when relating to their players.
This online platform needs to me made available to female players of all ages so coaches get to work doing so!
We've all had some experience with the Prep to Play protocol since it came to local footy clubs in the last 7 - 8 years and it's a constant work in progress to streamline the program to improve user-ability and to target what you need to in an ultra-specific way.
What's gone a bit sideways with PTP is that teams have used the same protocol for years on end when in fact there's level to PTP and you're meant to work through them and build your resiliency and robustness to the game of football.
Not that I want to start racing as soon as we start but one of my gripes with PTP is that is can be slow and engaged with not a lot of engagement from the players which can also mean it's not going to have its desired effect but seeing Brooke show how we can get it down in 10mins in a ramping intensity format has me back on board and I'll be adding the components I was missing straight back in for training tonight.
SKILL ACQUISITION - SHAE SLOANE
This was a practical session straight up at 9am Sunday morning and was highlighting the use of constraints in skill development 9sound familiar?).
She, and other AFL Vic Game Developers, all mentioned things I've written about over the years like repetition without repetition, differential learning, variable practice, challenge point, game representation and incorporating a constraint-led approach to training and had us try it out ourselves as well as showing some ways they do it at Melbourne.
It was great to see this stuff finally making its way from the AFL down to community level but that was only about 40 coaches out of the 1000's in Victoria alone but you got to start somewhere.
I saw ads for Game Developers a while back and now that I know what it actually is, I have asked for more information on becoming one.
In small groups we had to move through various stations and develop a training activity with the equipment at each station where we had 1 station of nothing but 3 tennis balls but when you know the principles behind CLA, then you can do this far easily then if you don't.
During your warm-up you want to incorporate some form of quick reaction/decision making straight away and get away from partner handball with slow/low intent handballs and 10min chats about the weekend.
For quick reaction it might be as simple as 3 kicks each in a race with the other partners to ramp up intent.
For low complex decision making it can be as simple as this by incorporate repetition without repetition by having the defender give the ball to the kicker in as many different ways as possible (roll, up in the air etc) and/or the kicker having to do something with the ball before they kick like pass it around their backs, under 1 leg etc:
RUCKS AND TALLS (STOPPAGE SET UPS/SYSTEMS + ROTATIONS/TIMINGS) - DARREN FLANIGAN
This was fun as Darren is old school Geelong ruck from the 90's and 90's and is as throwback to those days.
I only did half of this but 1 thing I took away was how to use your body at contest whether you're a big or small and that's to give them a shove 1st to knock them off balance but nothing silly, step across and in front of them with the leg closest to them, then use your closest elbow to hold them out as they try and come back to you and the ball:
Jodh was an innovator in the women's space, setting up kicking masterclass for female footballers as far back as 2014.
A high energy speaker, he was very engaging and had plenty of little gems on teaching kicking such as young girls initially trying to kick from their quad only (that can lead to overuse injuries as well as poor kicking distance/accuracy) and talked a bit about using basic leg swings to groove the action you want them to use as well as using a traffic light analogy:
I would like to see a lot of what he said combined with more external focus though v internal focus.
DEVELOPING GAME PLAN + OFFENSIVE STRATEGY - JACKSON KORNBERG (FRANKSTON DOLHINS VFL)
This was a very well-done presentation with just enough information to cover a lot of area's without getting bogged down into too many specifics.
Once again it was the simplicity that stood out but to be clear - it's probably highly technical when a coach lays it out for themselves but by the time it gets to the what the players get to see, it has been streamlined to an inch of its life with only the necessities remaining for ease of consumption and retention.
I liked he connected stats they use as KPI's to their game style, suggesting that your brand is crucial to sustainability and if your stats are maintaining or increasing, then you're on the right track.
He also posted a pre-xmas slide from a season or 3 back that shows how they introduce concepts from session 1 onwards.
Week 1 - Fundamentals
Session 1 x Hands in Tight + Session 2 x Kicking Club + Session 3 x Kicking Club
Week 2 - Flow
Session 1 Face Up/Fight Forward + Session 2 x Outnumber Game + Session 3 x Fight for the Outside
Week 3 Smash
Session 1 x Charge/Go Forward + Session 2 x Recover Back + Session 3 x Close Out/Deny
Week 4 Smoke and Flow
Session 1 x Outnumber Game + Session 2 x Recover Back/Own 1.5 + Session 3 x Intro to Transition
Week 5 Transition
Session 1 x Fight Forward/Transition + Session 2 x Fight Forward/Transition + Session 3 x Fight Forward/Transition
2 training activities he has on his slides were:
DIAMOND KICK
Go for 1min sets, not 3 - 5mins as I say in the video with the focus points being footwork for the outside players, use 1st option and don't force something inside that's not on
SEARCH AND DESTROY
Focus points being to face up and fight forward for the offense and to press forward and spare the deepest opposition for the defense.
Last year I discovered a Twitter account called One Percenters which is actually a guy named Mateo Szlapek-Sewillo - a footy analyst who provides THE BEST season previews in all of AFL-media print, screen and audio.
I've linked to him before and with his permission I have started to put together some AI-generated graphics on each tea based of his preview of each team.
Today we'll cover Adelaide, Brisbane, Carlton and Collingwood.
Week 1 of the practice games, or should I say match simulation, is over with and things get a little more real with official practice games this week before the real serious stuff.
I watched WB/Syd live and got sunburnt to a crisp but we (Swans) looked good and the Dogs were more than serviceable without a crop of their stars on the park.
The same holds for the Pies who were without most of their starting 22 but GWS had the week from hell in the lead up to the weekend and were also missing a few of their starters.
Some of the camera angles don't allow for a lot of the ball vision to be seen so I've got a lot of center bounce clearance clips.
Small group personal training done the right way. Train in a group - do YOUR OWN program. PT studio located in the heart of South Yarra on Surrey Road North, just off Toorak Road. 1on1 personal training also available. Don't do everyone else's program, get personal with your training.
