ALL FREE CONTENT FROM 2023 - COACHING

 

Even though this is a paid membership site, I'm always reading and taking notes and sometimes something I read is so useful that I can't keep it to myself.

In these cases, where I've simply rehashed someone else's work, I'll pop it up for free because all I did was read it, and take notes from it.

Over the next couple of weeks we'll take a look back at 2023 and today starts with all of the free content posted on ART this year, including these 8 coaching articles.

These next posts are a combination of article summaries, some much shorter studies then my last post and also some short game video analysis clips.

#1 - STARTING OUT WITH A CONSTRAINTS-LED APPROACH

This post comes from a Twitter thread from an account I follow where coaches from all different sports listing their best tip son starting out with a CLA approach to training.

HIGHLIGHT - "Patience, CLA increases realist encounters in an activity but it also means less success before consistent solutions are discovered through a loop of constraints - high struggle - exploration - less struggle -  solution/s."

#2 - COACHES CALL - KICK OUT

This post was a an actual AFLW game scenario from season 7 that I put up and then asked coaches what they'd do to reach a desired outcome - I'll still stabs at this if you're up for it.

HIGHLIGHT - Coaches helping coaches is always a personal highlight for me!

#3 - COACHING ISSUES WITH A CONSTRAINT LED-APPROACH

This article is again a bunch of notes taken from a Twitter thread from the same coach as above, this time asking coaches about the issue they have with implementing a CLA to training.

HIGHLIGHT - Knowing that you'll run into road blocks when you're coaching goes under a major overhaul, and that it happens to literally everyone, but at least you're trying to grow as a coach and not just rehash out-of-date coaching practices where any success you might have is mostly in spite of how and what and you're training your players - but if I choose one from the list in the post I'll go with "Letting go of short term success to strengthen long term growth."

#4 - COLLINGWOOD PRESSING DEFENSE VIDEO

This post contains a short video I made looking at Collingwood yet again implementing team defense where they press from the front, what it looks like and why it is so effective.

HIGHLIGHT - Premiership winning Collingwood indeed showing that training can transfer greatly to games if game representativeness is optimal - if you've seen the activities they use at training then you'll definitely see huge similarities in how they play.

#5 - THIS HAS TO BE THE NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF CONE-BASED TRAINING DRILLS

I'm clearly willing to die on the hill of getting rid of cone-to-cone drills from all footy training and this post from the book I later posted a shitload of notes from, did the best job I've seen of backing up why this HAS to happen.

HIGHLIGHT - "When you ask an athlete to perform a decoupled task where they are perceiving without action, they will be using a different parts of the brain (the vision for perception/ventral stream) then they will be when they play their actual sport (the vision for action/dorsal stream)."

#6 - COLLINGWOOD POST DIRECTORY

58 Craig McRae Quotes, 68 Training Activities Used by Collingwood in season 2023 (13 Small Sided Games, 20 Isolated Skill Practice Activities, 34 Game Play Activities, 1 Conditioning Activity) and 12 Game Video Posts.

HIGHLIGHT - 3 PDF products full of training activities that Collingwood literally used in the pre and in-season training periods to take them to the 2023 AFL Flag.

#7 - THE CULTURE AT MELBOURNE FC

This post came about after listening to the train-wreck that was the Simon Goodwin and Gary Pert doing an interview on SEN after the Clayton Oliver stories came out at season's end, taking excerpts from the interview and them me adding my thoughts to them.

HIGHLIGHT - ""I’m not buying it, to both of you...I hear what you’re saying bit it’s not playing out like that, the way we played in the back half of the season, the discipline, the blues – it doesn’t add up to a 40 year best standard of culture..." - Garry Lyon.

#8 - SPORTS COACHING OPINIONS TWITTER THREAD

For those who aren't super familiar with Twitter, if you only go on there every now and then then it can definitely be a complete cesspool of toxins but if you simply use as an tool to gather information like I do, then the content you're after will come up far more often then all the other bullshit that goes on there. This is a 3rd post using comments from a Twitter post but this time from a different coach, asking coaches to voice what opinions they have that are outside of the norm in the coaching game.

HIGHLIGHT - "Engagement + Participation + Fun + Motivation = Player Retention."

ALL FREE CONTENT FROM 2023 - STUDIES

 

Even though this is a paid membership site, I'm always reading and taking notes and sometimes something I read is so useful that I can't keep it to myself.

In these cases, where I've simply rehashed someone else's work, I'll pop it up for free because all I did was read it, and take notes from it.

Granted it still takes time and some of the studies you'll find below will take a day or 2 (or a full week!) to read and write about but I'm doing that anyway for own benefit, of which I then pass onto you.

Over the next couple of weeks we'll take a look back at 2023 and today starts with all of the free content posted on ART this year, starting with these 8 studies.

As always I encourage to visit the study links provided and read for yourself as the notes I take are in the context of what I understand about football and might not fit at all with your level of understanding.

#1 - ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS + COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR IN FOOTBALL

This huge piece took me a full week to read and compile notes from and thus was released in 3 parts:

PART 1

HIGHLIGHT - "ASPECTS OF ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS"

PART 2

HIGHLIGHT - "There is a decrease in interpersonal distances from the moment at which a ball carrier passes to a teammate and then to the proceeding moment of a pass initiation by that individual to a fellow player and there is greater variability in these measures when a ball carrier opts to run and carry rather then pass by hand or foot."

PART 3

It's mostly based on soccer the Sydney Swans were instrumental in the final release of the study.

HIGHLIGHT - "Macroscopic, Mesoscopic and Microscopic Interventions"

#2 - A PEOPLE-FOCUSED APPROACH

This study looks at player participation and retention rates in Australian sport - extremely relative to local/community football.

HIGHLIGHT - "When asked creating memorable experiences for kids they answered with having fun, being challenged to improve, get better at sport, playing with friends and socialising with LESS THAN HALF responding with winning"

#3 - HIGH PERFORMERS

This study looks at what they look like, what they think about and what sets them apart of us normal's.

HIGHLIGHT - "Design learning for each stage by providing an initial period of search/exploration followed by a discovery/stability phase and for advanced athletes, activities should enhance their ability to exploit the available affordances"

#4 - IN-GAME DECISION-MAKING OF AFL COACHES

A must-read for all footy coaches, giving you the opportunity to learn from the actual best.

HIGHLIGHT - "The 6 stage framework of decision making of AFL coaches during matches is opportunity trigger, understand the opportunity, determine the need or action, explore options, take action and evaluate the decision"

#5 - AFL COMMUNITY CLUB COACHING DEVELOPMENT 

This study looks at the role of coach developers and the coaching development issues that arise at local level and was released over 2 posts:

PART 1

HIGHLIGHT - "Senior/experienced coaches are used/chosen in grades where outcomes count the most leaving the inexperienced coaches to the usually younger age groups but this is where the most experience/assistance is needed"

PART 2

HIGHLIGHT - "Coach development not only supports coach education, but it also disrupts the practice of coaching how you were coached"

#6 - AFL ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS + SKILL ACQUISITION

This study looks at how coaches can shape the training environment to elicit the type of response they are after, but also being open to completely different responses to arise as well.

HIGHLIGHT - "The gardener cannot actually grow produce, they can only foster an environment in which it can occur"

#7 - PLAY FORM ACTIVITIES

This study looks why you should be using them, how to use them and the benefits of doing so.

HIGHLIGHT - "Distances between players that are too short for a specific group can make play impracticable for reaching the aimed level of performance behaviors because of too much participant density to afford intended actions. This is problematic for player development if it leads them to not take risks or to simply play like they always do - relying on speed and territory-based ball movement - when you're able to play a more slow/medium tempo footy and maintain possession for longer to have a greater impact on that particular play"

#8 - EXPERT v ACADEMY PLAYER DECISION MAKING

This study looks at Gaelic football players from under 17;s level and then senior level and asked them how they go about making in-game decisions.

HIGHLIGHT - "Players generate 4 main options (pass, recycle/play back, point and goal) through situational awareness which is influenced by 4 primary themes being pre-match context (coach tactics/instructions, match importance, opposition status), current match context (score, time), visual information (player positioning, field space, visual search strategy) and individual differences (self efficacy, risk propensity, perceived pressure, physical characteristics, action capabilities, fatigue)."

FOOTY TRAINING FALLACIES THAT NEED TO GO PART 3

 

In the first 2 posts we've covered points 1 - 8, and today we finish off with points 9 - 11.

#9 - MISS A KICK, PUSH UP AND HELP

#10 - BEST PLAYER = CAPTAIN

#11 - FUNDAMENTALS

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FOOTY TRAINING FALLACIES THAT NEED TO GO PART 2

 

The first post in this series had points 1 to 4, today we have points 5 - 8.

#5 - KICKING UNDER FATIGUE

#6 - HANDBALL OFF THE GROUND

#7 - NOT WORKING HARD ENOUGH

#8 - SCORING SYSTEMS TO REWARD PROCESS, NOT OUTCOME

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IMPLICATIONS OF YOUTH GIRLS PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT ON PARTICIPATION

These notes come from athletic preparation and performance coach Paul Gamble and looks at how the physical development of youth/teen girls can greatly influence their continued participation in not just footy, bit any, and all sport.

It provides some excellent insight into how different influences can have life lasting effects on competitive sport in the short term, and and continuing an active lifestyle in the long term.

Here were my takeaways that can give your club a leg up on the competition in retaining current and attracting new, youth girl participants.

Youth girl's are acutely sensitive to social judgement from their peers so their biggest barrier to sport is feeling a lack of competence and confidence, which is not imaginary as things do become harder for them once puberty kicks in.

Whereas boys get a the testosterone kick and the accompanying dramatic physical improvements, for girls it brings gains in mass and body levers become longer but without the gains in strength to match, and these strength deficits/compensatory changes in movement strategies bring injuries.

The solutions to keep girls in sport through this time is via physical preparation to provide the necessary boost and coaching to help them improve.

Youth girls go through puberty earlier then boys so the social judgment/importance of peers of their lasts for longer too, and can even start at pre-teen ages.

The availability of quality coaching is critical to lending to a sense of competence so they feel confident enough to continue, even if actual performance plateaus/drops.

Even if quality coaching is not immediately available, the possibility that they could soon access it, can provide some assurance.

Having the means to improve and remain competitive will have them more inclined to remain involved in sport.

HOW WE LEARN TO MOVE (ROB GRAY) NOTES PART 5

 

About a month ago I posted a very short excerpt from a book I had just completed titled "How We Learn to Move" by skill acquisition specialist Rob Gray and now with some AFLW winding down I can finally start posting the numerous noted I took from it.

I'm sure you'll get plenty our of the notes on their own but if you don't have a decent background in this theory of movement, then I strongly suggest you get your hands on the actual book.

Here's part 5 of 97 book notes and over 4300 words in the last post of this series.

CHAPTER 11 – YOUTH COACHING: THE PROBLEM WITH CONES AND MAKING PRACTICE FUN AGAIN

Skills like agility and ball handling, are functional and driven by information from the environment, but they often aren’t practiced that way.

It has long been assumed that in traditional coaching that teaching skills to novices must start with task decomposition which is breaking a skill down into components, isolating them and then having athletes repeat them over and over in the hope they just magically reconnect when attempting the full skill again.

An alternative way of reducing complexity to make it easier for kids to acquire the necessary perceptual-motor skills is through tag which is functional and purposeful with the participants trying to realise clear affordances (tag someone or avoid being tagged) and it is coupled and information-driven and the only way you get/avoid being tagged is by regulating your movement based on the perceptual information from the other person’s movement, plus it involves heaps of decision making.

Task decomposition also often involves decoupling perception from action but there is plenty of evidence suggesting we perceive the world differently when we are required to act on it as opposed to when we’re not. For example a goal keeper study had them view penalty clips and simply say what direction they thought the kick was going to go vs if they also then had to try and stop it and their gaze behavior was way different between each of the 2 options.

After light hits your eyes it is converted into an electrical signal that travels to the back of your head, arriving at the visual cortex where it splits off into 2 parts – the dorsal stream that goes to the top of your brain and the ventral stream that goes to the bottom - with each brain area doing vision for action and vision for perception respectively. What this means is that one is using visual information to help guide actions while the other is using it to allow for passive perception and verbal responses.

When you ask an athlete to perform a decoupled task where they are perceiving without action, they will be using a different parts of the brain (the vision for perception/ventral stream) then they will be when they play their actual sport (the vision for action/dorsal stream).

A similar problem comes when you ask a performer to act but you do not include the information they normally use such as cricket batters taking balls from a bowling machine that lacks the information the bowler themselves give out to batsman during their action.

Being skillful relies on a performer developing highly specific relationships between the information in their environment and their movement but when these are separated, then the task they are becoming skillful at is different to the actual game task and transfer is less likely to occur.

Instead of fundamentally changing the task the young athlete is trying to perform by decoupling it, the task can be simplified through scaling of the equipment such as lower compression balls, smaller racquets and lower net heights in tennis.

As far as learning fundamentals are concerned, a study had 10 and 11 year old soccer players complete 22 weeks of practice involving small sided games but they were not given any traditional, technical instruction but instead, the goal was for them to learn skills like dribbling and passing in the game, which were tested pre-study. While there were no improvements at 11 weeks, there were significant improvements in decision making and skill execution by week 22 so while it might take longer for basic skills to emerge, in the long run athletes develop the same fundamentals we see in traditional training but with the decision making improvements on top of it.

Young athlete should diversify the sports they partake in is that it can lead to a change in their individual constraints (strength, flexibility, speed etc) resulting in improved performance when they go back to their main sport.

CHAPTER 12 – WHAT ARE WE “ACQUIRING” ANYWAYS? THE NATURE OF EXPERTISE, AUTOMACITY AND DIRECT LEARNING

Direct learning consists of information/education of attention (involves a switch to using information that is more effective for the control of action, coined specifying information, where we need to vary constraints to encourage performers to educate their attention to more effective information), movement/education of intention (when a performer changes their goal for their action such as a long jumper being able to regulate and self organise their steps so they get as close to the board on take off as possible, even though they step out their run ups prior – degrees of freedom!) and calibration (learning a skill then altering it when needed to execute in slightly differing conditions like a new car where the brakes don’t quite work the same and acceleration is a little different).

In sum, the control of actions can be explained much more simply as the establishment and adaptation of information-movement control laws in which the performer directly picks up some action-relevant information from the environment and uses it to regulate their actions with no need for prediction, information processing or assessing memories of previous actions.

Skill involves innovation, whereas habits involve sheer repetition. Habits are pre-formed motor programs while skills are more adaptive and flexible.

CHAPTER 13 – THE EVOLVING ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY AND DATA IN SUPPORTING SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Using tech data in skill training can induced an internal focus of attention in an athlete, which is the telling the athlete to focus on specific body parts and moving them through specific ranges of motion, but this has been shown to result in inferior performance and learning of skills compared to conditions where attention is directed outwards towards the effect of their movement, such as following through towards your target when kicking. Internal focus of attention disrupts the self-organisation of degrees of freedom occurring in the athletes body parts.

CHAPTER 14 – INJURY PREVENTION AND ADAPTATION (NOT REHABILITATION!)

Being able to move in different ways to achieve the same goal not only gives the athlete the advantage of being able effectively adapt to the ever-changing constraints they face, but it also has the potential to reduce the impact and wear and tear on the body associated with repetitive movements.

An overemphasis on planned movements creates patterns (greater angles, rotations and energy absorbtion) that are likely to cause overuse injuries and it is likely these patterns appear because the movement is overly constrained so add more unplanned/unpredictability into the mix.

In a study on a group of pilots, from novices to experts, they found that variability was more then 1.5 times greater in experts which they put down to the very impoverished visual conditions which encouraged the experts to search for a movement solution to land the plane, acting with high variability to get some more information where novices simply tried to land the plane in the only way they knew how, how they’d been taught, regardless of the conditions.

A cracker of a book with plenty of takeaways for coaching in 2024, not 1984!

FOOTY TRAINING FALLACIES THAT NEED TO GO

 

I started playing footy in grade 4, while not turning 8 until after that season with a birthday in late September, in under 14's as there was no younger age groups in country Victoria back in 1988!

Between then and now I had 4 years out of football after moving to Melbourne then started back up again until now.

I'm 45 now so that's 33 out pf the last 376 years I've been actually playing football, while doubling that up with coaching in the last 4 or 5 years or so.

That's a lot of games, a lot of training sessions and a lot of coaches so its safe to say I've seen and heard it all from Auskick (coordinator for 2 years) right up division 1 football (coached 1 year).

As the game progresses in how it's played at all levels - even at the junior levels - the one thing that hasn't changed but holds the teams and players back more than they should be, is language.

The language around footy and the cliches still used today that originated last century, rarely line up with today's version of football.

One of the reasons there is an AFL v AFLW supporter battle is the use of language and maybe more importantly, tone, used by coaches towards their players with "yelly" coaches not really having a place in the game at any level anymore, as with the rise of dozens of other sports and outside interests, players no longer have nothing else to do with their friends except sport - they can simply all go off and play Fortnite together instead.

Teams in the past might have been ultra successful with this coaching style, but most coaches these days would agree that it was in spite of the coaching, not because of it.

Today I'll present 4 of the 10 fallacies of footy training that need to go, why they should go and what you can do or say instead.

#1 - DON'T REST YOUR HANDS ON YOUR KNEES, PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD"

#2 - TURNOVER WHEN THE BALL HITS THE GROUND

#3 - FOCUSING ON OUTCOMES OVER PROCESSES

#4 - FIRST OPTION IS ALWAYS THE BEST OPTION

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GAME/TRAINING SCENARIOS - WHAT TEMPO OUT OF DEFENSIVE 50?

                                   

This is a scenario that presented itself from the AFLW Grand Final this past weekend and has multiple game fundamentals involved in it, and when I say fundamentals I don't mean kick, mark and handballing, but actual fundamentals of team invasion sports such as space, timing and team cohesiveness.

 There's more than 1 way to go about this scenario and none of them are technically wrong of you can maintain possession but some will put you in a better position to create a solid scoring opportunity than others.

Game Moment - A mark taken off a teammates rebound 50 kick.

Previous Game Moment - Loose ball get and rebound 50 kick.

Game Video...

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SPORTS COACHING OPINIONS TWITTER THREAD

 

Last week, Rugby coach Dan Cottrell put this post up on Twitter asking "What opinion of yours in sports coaching will have you like this?", along with an image of very self-satisfied cartoon character.

It got a bit of traction with 97 responses to the actual post but I also saw dozens of quoted replies as well.

If you're a coach then there's plenty of replies you'll agree and disagree with but also plenty of replies that should get your coaching juices flowing so definitely worth your time.

Here's the posts I pulled out of the 97:

The way the coach designs training often has no effect on how a team plays, its the consecutive matches that make players better but is falsely attributed to training.

Kids only improve when they play down a level, not up a level.

Talent wins, coaching doesn’t, but it does put players in a position to win but then they have to execute.

If you don’t know the sport as a parent then you’ll struggle to know what good coaching is when you see it (closed v open practice, messy/chaotic etc) so think twice about complaining about what you're seeing.

It’s not about the win, it's about inclusion and fun.

My job (as under 9's coach) isn’t to win.

Game time for all.

If you don’t like what you see in games, then become a better coach as they are playing what/how you taught them.

The reason we have bad umpires is because we have bad coaches/parents/supporters.

Over the long term, players won’t remember scores but how you treated them/made them feel

For good players whinging about having to come off to give lesser players a run for fear of losing, if they were so good they’d have won the game before then (this applies exactly the same for coaches too).

A mindset coach can be equally as effective as a skills coach as the ability to prepare for practice/competition mentally facilitates the ability to train/play effectively.

Culture is how many players are attending your funeral (a bit out there but makes a point nevertheless.)

Less than 10% of a players’ skill set comes from the coach with the rest coming from teammates, opposition, watching etc.

Have you got any of your own? I'll start...

Engagement + Participation + Fun + Motivation = Player Retention

Your turn...

HOW WE LEARN TO MOVE (ROB GRAY) NOTES PART 4

 

About a month ago I posted a very short excerpt from a book I had just completed titled "How We Learn to Move" by skill acquisition specialist Rob Gray and now with some AFLW winding down I can finally start posting the numerous noted I took from it.

I'm sure you'll get plenty our of the notes on their own but if you don't have a decent background in this theory of movement, then I strongly suggest you get your hands on the actual book.

Here's part 4 of 97 book notes and over 4300 words in this series.

CHAPTER 8 – NEW WAYS OF COACHING 2: DIFFERENTIAL LEARNING

Differential learning shares some similarities with CLA with goals of destabilising the existing movement solutions/attractors, promoting exploration, self organisation and creating variability in movement execution but in different ways.

Every player has their own level of inherent variability (specifics in the same movement) and these differences can be attributed to differences in the intrinsic dynamics as each of our own perceptual-motor landscapes has different layouts, with deeper and shallower attractors, but this variability is good as it reflects adaptation to changing constraints.

In differential learning, we are trying to enhance the good while reducing the bad (more noise) with the primary goal being to add fluctuations in movement on top of the performer’s inherent variability with the intent of increasing the strength of the signal (the movement solution) – pulling out the signal from the noise by adding more noise.

The key characteristics of differential learning is to add random variability to the practice environment to promote stochastic resonance, perturb the system by NOT getting the athlete to move in practice as they will move in a game, allowing the performer to gain information about the solution space that can be used in future performances and by creating the optimal level of noise for the individual athlete.

By initially teaching skills by dribbling around cones, hitting off tee’s etc, we are purposefully reducing the variability and removing things like decision-making because the correct technique is best established through low variability and repeatable conditions, but only 1 technique is developed when we now know we need an endless supply of techniques to solve all the problems that games throw at us. To achieve this, we want to introduce variability right at the beginning of training to encourage exploration of the perceptual-motor landscape and learning to solve movement problems.

CHAPTER 9 – GOOD vs BAD VARIABILITY, OPTIMAL MOVEMENT SOLUTIONS AND EFFECTIVE SELF ORGANISATION

Freezing degrees of freedom refers to taking some bodyparts out of the equation by not moving them at all or by coupling two different body parts so that they move together which at least gives you some proficiency to at least start playing the game, but it also removes links such as your stance leg pushing hard into the ground as you kick resulting in further distance and velocity. It is also not very adaptable and not very resilient to external factors such as opposition.

Freezing is only the first part of Bernstein's skill development model, which is followed by freeing which is where the athlete gradually lifts any restrictions they have placed on their movement which presents as more fluidity of movement (a less-robot-like kicking action for example).

The third part is the search for optimality which involves the performer finding the optimal movement solution for that specific scenario.

Dexterity is not confined within the movements of actions themselves but is revealed in how these movements behave in their interaction with the environment, unexpectedness and surprise. 

Optimality requires that we move our body parts in a manner such that they work together in synergy.

A motor synergy is a movement solution for which there is functional co-variation between the degrees of freedom that serves to stabilise the performance outcome (having to perform your handball action around an opponent and the more joint degrees of freedom you need to do).   

Motor synergies cannot possibly occur if we just reel off a pre-programmed movement stored in our head after hours and hours of repetition.

Becoming skillful should involve a relative increase in good variability and a decrease in bad variability with practice.

He ran a study where baseball batters had a relatively large amount of inherent variability in the timing of the swing which in turn was associated with poor performance – not hitting the ball very often. In the study this wasn’t remedied by eliminating all variability and producing a highly repeatable swing but by the batters restructuring variability – increasing the amount of good and moving away from bad variability.  

CHAPTER 10 – A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE

The Fosbury flop in the high jump came about when they changed the landing surface from sand at floor level to a crash mat at mid thigh level (task constraint), enabling jumpers to explore jumping over the bar in different ways but inspired far more by the task constraint then creativity.

Creativity arises from a symmetrical, coupled interaction between the individual, task and environmental constraints faced by the performer.

Creative solutions are not ideas but emerge when a performer acting and searching for solutions to satisfy the constraints of a task.  

AFLW GRAND FINAL GAME ANALYSIS - NORTH MELBOURNE v BRISBANE

                               

With 189 clips from 73 out of 99 games in season 8 of AFLW, here's what I saw from an absolute belter of  Grand Final.

I don't care what way you look at it, the better team always wins regardless of how many quarters they won on the scoreboard or whatever.

Brisbane's best (half of quarter 3 and all of quarter 4) was better then North's best (quarters 1, 2 and 3), with the Lions scoring as many goals as the Roos did in that last quarter.

North were far from disgraced but it goes to show that stats in AFLW can mean very little to the end result for a variety of reasons.

Our final 5 clips looks at:

 Dakota Davidson's (close to) kick of the year, opting to be ultra-offensive instead of a safe kick down the line to space but then turned into a below average inside 50 for the Lions.

North Melbourne having a free player entering inside 50 into space but not squaring herself up to the kicker good enough to make her an attractive enough option to kick to, instead going long and high to Brisbane intercept mark.

North Melbourne applying multiple layers of front pressing defense that pays off, enabling them to regain possession to go forward fast. 

Orla O'Dwyer getting in behind her forwards to receive a deep inside 590 kick in space and the goal that kick started the Lions fight back followed by a quick video of my own giving another look at how it all developed.

For full access to this game analysis post, and all the others from AFLW season 8, register for a level 3 membership from https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

DELAYED 5v5 TRAINING ACTIVITY

 

This training activity uses a delayed start meaning it will be a slow to medium paced play at most, and then encourages players to build up with precision at they can only score once they get into the scoring zone.

There's plenty of ways to utilise this so here's the basic set up and then we'll go to work on it...

For full access to this training activity,register for a level 3 membership from https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

AFLW GAME ANALYSIS: BRISBANE v GEELONG + NORTH MELBOURNE v ADELAIDE

                           

2 absolute cracker prelim finals over the weekend with a combined winning margin of a measly 5pts! 

We could very easily be looking at an Adelaide/Geelong GF but that's how close the top end of AFLW is, even if the drop off from about 5th down is a quite dramatic but in the end the end the men's comp played out in a very similar way.

In the Lions/Cats game we look at:

Geelong opting not to even up inside the forward 50, resulting i them not even being able to generate a winnable 1v1, let alone a free option to kick to.

Dakota Davidson's positioning when the ball is the Lions defensive 50. 

Geelong wingers twice allowing Orla O'Dwyer to get loose off the contest with one them resulting in a goal.

In the Roos/Crows game we look at:

A prime example of perceived pressure and what that does to a player psychologically, which plays out physically and tactically.

North Melbourne not utilising a prime chance to get the ball to the outside and a quick inside 50 entry to their bag of tall forwards.

A great formation tactic used by the Roos on a forward 50 throw in that almost pays off.

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BECOME A TACKLING MACHINE

I received this email from a member Aussie Rules Training over the weekend:

"...I've coached Senior Women for the last 5 years and tackling is one area I can't seem to nail in an organised drill. I can demonstrate the technique but wondered if there was anything structured I could use?..."

My quick initial response this:

"...Training tackling would fall under “specific skill craft” for mine and then would be trained as such via 1v1 for the most part and than we’re hoping that transfers to games but tackling is the most variable action in footy so it’s more about nailing the principles of tackling and then players can only really teach themselves the million different ways of doing that in games. This is a full post I think!..."

And here we are with a post containing videos and teaching points in regards to tackling and applying defensive pressure.

The 3 most common ways of tackling:

1. In congestion with both players having minimal momentum (mostly 1v1)
2. The defender chasing an attacker for a loose ball and the attacker gets there first (again mostly 1v1)
3. Open play (multiple attackers and defenders)

There's similar but different principles for each scenario.

In congestion the focus is on...

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HOW WE LEARN TO MOVE (ROB GRAY) NOTES PART 3

                                                     

About a month ago I posted a very short excerpt from a book I had just completed titled "How We Learn to Move" by skill acquisition specialist Rob Gray and now with some AFLW winding down I can finally start posting the numerous noted I took from it.

I'm sure you'll get plenty our of the notes on their own but if you don't have a decent background in this theory of movement, then I strongly suggest you get your hands on the actual book.

Here's part 3 of 97 book notes and over 4300 words in this series.

CHAPTER 6 – LEARNING AS SEARCH, THE LAWS OF ATTRACTION AND THE TIM TEBOW PROBLEM

Despite the increased focus on the role of variability in skillful movement that is not to deny there is not also considerable in-variance – things that are the same across executions made by the same performer and are similar between different performers.  

Even though, in theory, there are endless number of movement solutions we could use, we all have certain coordination tendencies as we are attracted to certain solutions that are highly stable and struggle to execute others that are very unstable.

Tim Tebow was a great college player but he held the ball too low when dropping back to pass which took him .2sec longer to get his throw off which he could get away with slower college defenses, but not in the pro’s.

The movement solution we come up with, and the attractor landscape we create, is shaped by the constraints we face when practicing a skill. 

Bifurcation refers to learning in which we switch to using a completely different coordination pattern that we’ve never done before by creating a new attractor.

Shift learning refers to a gradual shift towards a desired pattern, reflecting the fact that we are not completely restructuring our perceptual-motor landscape and making new attractors but instead just shifting and reorganising the ones we already have.

Coaches need to accept that in a complex system they cannot possibly know what the optimal movement solution for an individual athlete will be – they can only help them find it for themselves.

CHAPTER 7 – NEW WAYS OF COACHING 1: THE CONSTRAINTS-LED APPROACH (CLA)

Trying to give the pitcher the “correct” mechanics does not fit well with the business model of self organisation.

Research has shown that even highly skilled athletes are very poor at following detailed instructions about how to change or correct their technique.

How can an athlete possibly be expected to implement a 2.5% change in angle or a 5cm change in position when these aspects of my movement are varying by more than that already?

Another issue with trying to correct technique flaws via explicit instruction is that, even when you get the athlete to implement the change, it tends not to be very sticky.

Athletes change their movement solutions to a less effective one under pressure because of how they were taught in the first place, and by following those explicit instructions you did when you were young, it only adds more pressure to nail every single cue in an already high-pressure situation.

In baseball pitching, a common technical flaw is forearm fly-out and a great way to help this is to practice with a connection ball, which is a large rubber ball between held between the arm and the body, and when you pitch, the ball goes towards the plate when it flies out which means you’ve kept your arm in while rotating and released it at the right time.  

There are 4 key principles to CLA and 1 or more of them are manipulated in practice in order to de-stabilise the existing movement solution/attractor, encourage exploration and self organisation, to amplify information and invite affordances and to provide transition feedback about the effectiveness of the search, and are present in small sided games.

Conditioned games, in conjunction with small sided games, manipulate task constraints by changing the rules.

A verbal instruction to a player is a type of task constraint (an informational one) that can and should be used. 

A study on using analogies as coaching cues showed that using analogies to convey a motor skill’s key features does not require the performer to implement highly specific technical changes (which we are not very good at), avoids specific references to bodyparts which can lead to choking and allows for variability and individuality.

HOW WE LEARN TO MOVE (ROB GRAY) NOTES PART 2

                                                 

About a month ago I posted a very short excerpt from a book I had just completed titled "How We Learn to Move" by skill acquisition specialist Rob Gray and now with some AFLW winding down I can finally start posting the numerous noted I took from it.

I'm sure you'll get plenty our of the notes on their own but if you don't have a decent background in this theory of movement, then I strongly suggest you get your hands on the actual book.

Here's part 2 of 97 book notes and over 4300 words in this series.

CHAPTER 4 – FREEDOM THROUGH CONSTRAINTS?

The answer to the problem of too much choice/degrees of freedom is to take away some options.

A constraint is something that eliminates certain possibilities or options for action.

Everyone has different individual constraints, such as the player who can kick on both sides of the body that has the option of going left or right on a defender, where a 1-sided player has only 50% of these options – constraints change the movement solutions available to us.

Environmental constraints are properties of the world around us (gravity, wind, temperature, surface etc).

Task constraints are factors highly specific to the skill being performed such as training against no opposition vs playing against opposition – you now have far more constraints to work around as you perform the the same skill. 

When we first learn a new movement skill, we constrain ourselves naturally through a process called freezing degrees of freedom, where we rigidly fix degrees of freedom by not using particular joints/muscles as we don’t know how to integrate them yet.

A coach can give instructional constraints (you’re the left winger so stay on the left part of the ground etc), that quickly serves to prevent all players swarming around the ball.   

The method of amplification of errors is a constraint manipulation that takes a slight “flaw” in a movement pattern and making it much larger and louder to the perceptual system of the performer.

You can also add constraints through appropriate manipulation of the task constraint of equipment, such as junior football players playing games on smaller grounds, with less player numbers and a smaller footy.

Another way that constraints can be manipulated to create action opportunities for a performer is by changing their individual constraints through appropriate strength and conditioning training such as goal keepers with quicker movement times consistently waiting a bit longer before starting to block the shot, subsequently getting more information about where the shot was likely to go before trying to block (less guessing).

Constraints can also be manipulated to aid self organisation and skill acquisition by introducing variability and some essential noise as we’re not trying to develop 1 ideal technique, but to be adaptable and flexible so that we can use different movement solutions to achieve our goal in the face of ever-changing conditions.

Moving skillfully involves coming up with new solutions to new problems, not just by repeating the same old solution.  

Think of constraints as informative boundaries that guide self organisation by pushing performers away from certain solutions and encouraging them to look for others while providing information for them about how they should change how they are moving.

CHAPTER 5 – WE PERCEIVE THE WORLD IN TERMS OF WHAT OUR BODY AFFORDS US

Our perception of the world changes depending on our ability to act within it.

Perception of our environment is not solely based on its physical properties, rather perception is embodied, where the information we detect about size, distance and speed of objects is scaled by our ability to act on these objects.

This embodied perception approach to perception argues that what we perceive is not a true representation of “what is out there” but rather what reflects our ability to act on objects in our environment.  

Interesting studies have been done on people’s ability to judge the slope of a hill where the same hill walked up on your own vs with a 20kg back back are perceived way differently. If you’re young and strong then the added load may have you perceive the slope as maybe 20% harder but if you’re older and weaker, then it may be perceived as 80% harder.

Experienced athletes have a memory store of different plays and then they match the current situation to an old but similar one, which can give you a quick checklist of what’s worked in this situation before, what hasn’t and what your options are.  

For a performer, gaps don’t look wide, opponents don’t look near and pitching throws don’t look fast. Instead, performers see pass-through-ability in a gap, tackle-ability of an opponent and hit-ability of a pitch.

Affordances have to be measured to the individual as they are unique to that individual.

When we pick up information of the world, we need to somehow incorporate our own action capabilities which is usually not much of a challenge such as searching your crowded basement looking for the fuse box and the main affordance your using is pass-through-ability in reference to thinking “Can I pass through the gap in those boxes?”, “Do I need to go sideways or do I need to rotate my body to do so?” The perception of what is possible is different between thin and bigger people because our perception is well calibrated our action capacity.

Relating our perception of the world and our action capabilities is an ongoing process and it must be because as we grow our dimensions change, we get fatigued and our movement changes.

In a rock climbing study they found that climbers with less grip strength simply looked for the route with the largest holds where climbers with greater grip strength had a far less predictable gaze pattern as they could view a wider range of possibilities that they could act on as no hold was unattainable for them.

Our perception is embodied – our physical capacity is shaping how we view the world and when it is not very large, we see only the limited, predictable opportunities for action but when it is large, it opens a whole new set of affordances for us. We see the world like this because it directly supports our ability to act in our environment.  

Embodied perception supports action selection so when a pitch is more suited to my goal of hitting to my an area where I can run a base, then I perceive the affordance as hit-ability, which makes the ball look bigger and makes me more likely to select an action of swinging.  

Embodied perception supports an action selection process that helps reduce our energy expenditure and keeps us from becoming overly fatigued.

The constraints of our environment shape our perception of it in terms of the task we are given (the direction we are asked to hit the ball), the environment we act in (whether we can choose between stairs and an escalator) and is embodied in terms of our individual constraints (the length of time we have dive to the corner of a soccer net to stop a goal kick).

HOW WE LEARN TO MOVE (ROB GRAY) NOTES PART 1

                                                           

About a month ago I posted a very short excerpt from a book I had just completed titled "How We Learn to Move" by skill acquisition specialist Rob Gray and now with some AFLW winding down I can finally start posting the numerous noted I took from it.

I'm sure you'll get plenty our of the notes on their own but if you don't have a decent background in this theory of movement, then I strongly suggest you get your hands on the actual book.

These posts coming in the next couple of weeks consist of 97 book notes over 4300 words so here we go.

PREFACE

When we acquire a new skill, we want to harness the natural inconsistency and variability in our bodies rather than treating it as “noise” and attempting to tame it through repetition.

CHAPTER 1 – THE MYTH OF THE “1” REPEATABLE TECHNIQUE

We don’t repeat our movements, but they are not completely random and variable either – they are shaped by the constraints of our environment, including our culture.   

CHAPTER 2 – WE ARE BUILT TO PRODUCE AND DETECT VARIATION

Perceptual fading refers to the tendency for objects that are completely stabilised on the eye (like using a headrest) to completely disappear from consciousness even though it is still there, as our sensory system stops signalling our brain when nothing changes in the environment. 

Adding too much noise will eventually make the signal less visible so you need to find the right amount of noise, especially when implementing differential learning.

Context conditioned-variability refers to movements of our body not occurring in a vacuum but in a set of changing internal and external factors, so we’ll never repeat the same movement twice

By possessing multiple, variable solutions to achieve the same goal is a fundamental feature found throughout nature – coined degeneracy – which occurs in a system when structurally dissimilar components can perform similar functions, being effectively interchangeable. 

Having multiple solutions creates an advantageous state of redundancy, so that we are not reliant on a single solution.

CHAPTER 3 – THE BUSINESS OF PRODUCING MOVEMENTS AND WHY WE DON’T NEED A BOSS

The Central Executive (cerebral cortex in the brain) is the boss and gives the overall plan of action after receiving information from the sensory area of the brain. The manager (motor cortex) works on the specifics needed to carry out the plan. The assembly line workers (brain stem/spinal chord) do the work and execute the movements.

The perception department takes in cues from the environment, the cognition department analyses/interprets the cues and makes predictions, the decision making and planning department plan/program the movement to be executed and the motor control department executes the movement.

A generalised motor program is a representation of a particular motor action, stored in your memory, with specific values for each of the degrees of freedom you need when moving but results in task deconstruction which a poor technique for learning.

The business model used by a flock of birds is one of self organisation which refers to the order and structure in the company arising from the interactions between the lower-level components of the system, not from some rules or a plan given by a higher-level controller. Each bird organises themselves based on the information in front of them, without the need for a boss.

The perception-action loop is environment to perception to the performer to the action the back to the environment again.

In a self organisation system, the business plan comes from often unpredictable interactions between workers. 

The advantages of solving the degrees of freedom problem via a self organisation business model is that if we can form temporary working groups of components that will interact and solve a specific movement problem, then new are much more readily adaptable to changing conditions so the birds can be successful in different directions, speeds, weather conditions etc.

The 2^nd advantage is that the self organising system is more robust to errors made by one of its workers

We don’t need a boss as we can have order/organisation in a system like the human body without the requirement of a central executive controlling everything from above.

AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - ADELAIDE v SYDNEY + MELBOURNE v GEELONG

                                          

We continue on from the Crows total demolition of my up-and-coming Swans then move to the Melbourne/Geelong game.

The Cats, list-wise, underperformed a touch in the home-and-away season, losing to Essendon and Collingwood and only beating 1 team in the 8 (Sydney) coupled with mostly unconvincing wins against lesser opponents.

Forever it's been the big 4 - Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, North Melbourne - and now finally it looks like we have a 5th entrant into the upper echelon of AFLW.

Even the Dees almost pulled off the greatest comeback in all-of-footy history, the Cats were the dominant team for 3 quarters and simply took the game away from Melbourne in that time.

I posted last week they have established stars in every part of the ground and they used each and every single one of them to make it through to the Prelim this weekend, with the reward being Brisbane at home, where they wet down by just 2pts in round 4 last season.

From both of these games we look at:

Sydney giving up the exact same center bounce clearance from yesterday's video, 1min later in actual game time.

Sydney making the center bounce player and tactical adjustment, and winning the clearance for a rare deep 50 entry.

Shifting games we see Geelong's forward half team defensive formation, enabling them to have numbers in front and behind the ball for repeat inside 50's.

Shelley Heath just running her lane offensively from her defensive 50m line, then getting free and setting a block in her own goal square to provide Zanker an easy leading lane inside 50.

Nina Morrison's leg power is a thing of beauty.

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AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - ADELAIDE v SYDNEY

                               

After a late season charge, the Swans run out of juice Saturday night and like we always knew, showed the gaping hole between the top 4 (now the top 5!) and the rest of the AFLW.

While still in only our 2nd season in existence, the loss of our ruck and main forward target hurts a developing team, as well as being a good 2 - 3 midfielders short of the top teams who can run at least 6 quality mids through there and not lose much in way of clearances etc.

The Crows are a professional outfit and just stopped any continuity the Swans wanted, whether that be through their kicking game or running the ball.

I've always said Danielle Ponter could be the best player in the league if she can move into the middle, which she did in a dominant display Saturday night, but the young/inexperienced Sydney midfield is a different kettle of fish compared to the hardened Brisbane outfit, so she could actually be the difference this weekend if she can go again. 

This game spills into tomorrow's post as well but today we look at:

Chloe Molloy putting in 3 efforts, gaining 80 - 90m of territory and then a stoppage all while being heavily outnumbered, all at the same time without a single stat to show for it.

Adelaide showing precise center bounce clearance with the dominant ruck in the game, which will be a running theme for various reasons the longer the game goes on.

Ella Heads showing great adaptability - the actual definition of high skill - during her kick to deceive the opposition multiple times and keep her options open.

Paige Sheppard giving the ball up with 10secs to go in the 2nd quarter resulting in an Adelaide goal right on the half time siren, essentially snuffing out of being in any position to stay in the game, which would have required a monumental game shift anyway.

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10 TRAINING ACTIVITIES VOLUME 2

                                       

I did one of these a while back which are training activities I have in my files simply sitting there as I accumulate them quicker than I post them so here's another 10 you can use on day 1 of pre-season!

ROV OFF COACHES BAG...

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AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - GEELONG v ESSENDON

The writing was a bit on the wall for the Bombers after losing to a Gold Coast without their best player last week and they just lost form at the wrong time of the season. They're still a a couple of players on every line away from really competing at the top end of the ladder consistently.

Geelong have been inconsistent this year but their best is possibly good enough to make a Grand Final with a monster midfield (G.Prespakis, A.McDonald, Morrison), a solid back line (M.McDonald, Gunjaca, Webster) and a versatile forward line (Parry, Moloney, Scheer), with the last one injured and already ruled out for next week against the Demons.

From this game we look at:

Chloe Scheer simply kicking to where she wants the forward to run to, essentially making the decision for Moloney by simply kicking to the space for her advantage.

Geelong's stellar use of fast and sloe play forward handballing to get the extra territory needed to make the inside 50 kick and resultant mark.

Essendon wanting to relive a ball up at the top of Geelong's goal square where they had a +3 outnumber but failed miserably in their positioning around the contest and gave up a defensive 50 stoppage goal that really shouldn't have happened.

Geelong lasso free kick on the mid wing showing a clear number advantage pattern of play that is rarely seen or used in AFLW, even though it is available in every single game at some point. It might not result in a certain goal scoring opportunity but at least you can easily move the ball off the line with minimal opposition interference if you practice it enough and are familiar with the scenario.

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AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - GOLD COAST v SYDNEY

                             

Gold Coast were in hot form going into this one on their home deck with a definitive win against finalist Essendon without their best player in the last round of the season to clinch a finals berth themselves.

They still had Whitford, Drennan and Single in the midfield, ruck dominance as the Swans have gone small since Morphett went down and 2 solid tall forwards in Bohanna and Dupuy but even as a Sydney supporter I didn't see this coming.

With a record-breaking 106 tackles and only a -1 in clearances with a - 43 in hit outs, it allows the Swans first use out of congestion and into their marking game where they were + 28.

Simply an unbelievable result for a young team only in their 2nd season, coming off the back of a demoralising win-less season i 2022.

They've already exceeded expectations by a wide margin but hey, while you're there you might as well try and go as far as you can and who knows what can happen.

From this game we look at:

Gold Coast not really organised at stoppage and Chloe Molloy sharking 1 of the Suns' 59 hit outs in Sydney's forward 50 and successfully snapping for goal.

Gold Coast being instructed at quarter time to go forward more and they set up accordingly at the center bounce to start the 2nd quarter to pretty good effect.

Sydney making the adjustment to the Suns center bounce structure by positioning more defensively and then being able to fill the space the Suns want to go forward in.

Sydney not pressing from the front defensively where they usually would and enabling the Suns to maintain forward ball movement.

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AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - ADELAIDE v BRISBANE

                                   

Brisbane are a bloody well-oiled unit and now they've shown a form of resilience and grit that they've never really had to before, after losing to the Saints in Melbourne and then beating the Demons comfortably in the last round of the season, to beating ladder leaders Adelaide on their home deck in the first week of the finals.

They had some mid-season mishap with 2 players being dropped for disciplinary reasons and were somewhat written off after round 1 when the Tigers beat then in Brisbane in round 1.

Like the other top 3 teams, they have superstars everywhere but also a nice blend of youngsters who have come in and picked right up where the experienced players now not at the club, left, and that's a testament to Craig Starcevich and his coaching staff.

Adelaide will be back though and they also just keep turning up and making preliminary finals at will but hopefully at the expense of my Sydney Swans this weekend!

The 4 clips from this game looks at:

Brisbane's overall game intelligence and just recognising simple formation cues that will result in an outnumber advantage.

A missed opportunity by Brisbane to come forward and press defensively at the kicker instead of getting caught in the middle and not impacting at all, allowing the kicker the time and space to get enough purchase on the kick to goal from long range.

Adelaide's 2 deepest forwards taking marks in the defensive half of the ground and slowing the down the game down but also knowing that there's no point looking forward of the ball because the deepest forwards are already in play, instead looking corridor for delayed run from behind options, which does open up and in 2 kicks they're on the opposite boundary 100m away from the original kick simply from looking and then kicking off the line.

Adelaide missing an opportunity to string at least 2 uncontested possessions together in their own forward half, more than likely resulting in a deep inside 50 to the fat side into space with only 4mins to go and down by just 4 points - it's decision making under pressure that wins finals games in those situations!

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AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - SAINTS NOT USING OVERLAP RUN, BLUES D50 'MARE, TIGERS FORWARD LINE

                                   

We've got 4 last clips to finish off round 10, the final round of the season 2023.

We look at:

St Kilda's Grace Kelly using great overlap run and even though the  Saints to utilise it, they are still able to transition the ball from defensive 50 to deep forward 50, mark and goal. If you're process driven then she should have been used in either of those 2 instances she was available.

Next we see Carlton have a 'mare in the back 50 where the kicker A) doesn't take the time to explore the field in more detail, taking the first an closest option she could find (the first option isn't the best option, the BEST option is the best option!) and B) she doesn't drive with her legs to get momentum through the ball, it loops up a bit and is cut off directly out from goal. Find your highest % option!

Moving to the Collingwood/Richmond game, Livingstone is ALWAYS the hang back/loose defender in the Pies back line which also means she has to be instructing everyone else around her so she needs to make sure that happens but also that her positioning is to take away the most dangerous option, whether that be opposition marking or leading space. It also doesn't help that Brennan's direct defender gave her the fat side to lead into where their was no help defense, plenty of space to lead and kick to and that's what happened. 

Lastly you know what you'll get with the Hosking twins and that's a couple of brick walls that won't no for an answer and who will compete until the bitter end. In this case we have Sarah initially being worked under the ball by her direct defender but doesn't let that slide, pushing herself back into the contest, getting a flat hand to the ball to her open advantage then kicking the ball of the air for a goal. If you aren't a competitor then you simply don't get that goal and it kick started a dominant Tigers final quarter.

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AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - THE BEST DEFENSIVE PLAY OF THE SEASON?

                               

I've posted numerous clips of players/teams pressing in defensively from the front of the ball carrier/receiver, something Collingwood used to great effect to win the men's premiership this past season.

In AFLW, Geelong probably do more of it than any other team ans Sydney have introduced it a little bit this season as well but this comes from Hawthorn in their very last game of the year.

The point of pressing up hard defensively is to disrupt the forward handball game of the opposition and in doing so, hopefully turning the ball over as close to your goal as possible, rather then simply run beside them, give them free territory (which I've also highlighted a bunch of times this season) and then if you still manage to get an intercept, it's 50+ meters (1 - 2 kicks in AFLW) further down field then it could, and should have been.

This has to be a team tactic and everyone needs to all-in on it because of 1 player fails to press up, then you can't get the dominoes pressure effect and the opposition will then eventually receive the ball in space but most of your defenders are all now past the ball.

Anyway that's the 2nd clip in this video and it was an unbelievable effort for the Hawks to turn the ball over where they did considering all the time and space the Cats had in the lead up.

The first video, albeit a bit hard to see, shows the Hawks getting a 3v2 outnumber but fail to make it obvious enough for the ball carrier to find with poor spacing and pattern recognition by all 3 Hawks players really.

The Eagles got a bit of a healthy kick from their coaching change and in turn, have played with far more dare and intent in their last 3 games, giving them something to take into 204 that wasn't there before.

In this clip they handball out of congestion and get the ball into open space with supporting numbers, where normally they might get the initial handball out of congestion but then just kick it to clear the area, essentially shifting the pressure from the kicker to someone else up the field, and then that pressures comes right back on them when it comes 5secs later!

In this scenario they clearly try and use a handball chain to move the ball which was some of the best transition football they've shown in recent years but then they just don't commit enough to it for long enough in this instance, and fail to use the extra handball that was there and could have resulted in a ball landing 20m from their goal, but instead they kick it long to a free Adelaide defender only just inside forward 50, so a valuable but very teachable lesson for them right there.

Moving to the Carlton/St Kilda game, we look at the very first center ball up and how the Carlton midfielder just doesn't keep her space off the ruck tap, and not being able to take the ball cleanly off the tap, losing the ball and resulting in a saints inside 50.

Lastly we look at the sheer athleticism of Bre Moody and how if Carlton can really nail how to use all of her gifts at various times, it will make them a far greater proposition on a weekly basis.

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AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - WESTERN BULLDOGS v NORTH MELBOURNE

Looking at this game about a month ago and when North were flying and the Dogs were win less it looked like a forfeit would have been a better result, and then with the Dogs getting their first win last week against the Eagles, it's like they got their win and they'll drop back to normality for this last game.

In the end the Dogs had a crack but just haven't had their cattle available in 2023, playing 2 - 3 train on players for a good portion of the year and and 4 scoring shots from just 22 inside 50's is the tale of their season really but with the blooding on plenty of youngsters this season and all of the returning players from injury + top end draft picks in 2024, could see a pretty quick turnaround for the Dogs in the next couple of seasons.

So we have 4 clips today looking at:

The Dogs finding a mark, getting control but then not exploring enough of the ground to find their 100% option, kicking to a 1v2 with their 1 being all of 158cms!

Next we see Gabby Newton who's been thrown back in the last part of the season with their injuries, more than likely seeing the space where her opposition forward wanted the ball to be kicked to but still not reading it quick enough to switch sides and seal that space off.

With Newton being thrown back they've now got a shortage up forward with Rocky Cranston being their main target at 171cms but not a key position payer by any stretch, and its like all the Bulldogs forwards are waiting for someone to present either up at the ball carrier, or down the line, but no one does and they end up having to kick to a a 1v4 on the edge of their forward 50 and losing possession off the back of it.

Lastly we look at probably the best transition of the season with North Melbourne perfectly using lane running from defensive 50 to forward 50, clearly showing how once you get 1 more lane then the opposition, then you can pretty much move the ball any way you want as you have the outnumber for as long as you keep running.  

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AFLW GAME ANALYSIS - GOLD COAST v ESSENDON

                                          

With a finals spot on the line and missing their best player in Rowbottom, the Suns got it done against Essendon on Friday night, setting up an elimination finals against my Sydney Swans this coming Saturday night.

I wasn't sure if they could replace what Rowbottom does and that Maddy Prespakis would take over in congestion but Lucy Single tagged her to death, especially in the 2nd half.

You don't see it often in AFLW yet, but Gold Coast have made internal growth with Single and Whitford becoming bonafide midfielders, Dupuy becoming one of the great contested marks in the comp and the speed/run of D'arcy out of defense set them up as a destination target for free agents going forward.

The Bombers ended up playing 3 teams in the final 8, going 1-2 in them with their only win against Geelong in an almost unwatchable affair down in my hometown of Warrnambool, but I still thought they get the win Friday night off the back of Rowbottom not playing,

We've 5 clips from this game looking at:

Essendon not taking the 100% option and instead opting fora 50/50 that misses the target, ending in a ground ball situation and a resultant turnover, instead of a deep inside 50 and potential scoring opportunity.

Gold Coast's Daisy Davies not continuing to run towards the goal as the ball transitions forward and stays connected to the play and is eventually used as a hit up option at center half forward resulting in a 50m penalty and goal.

The extremely zippy Niamh McLaughlin pressing too aggressively in her own forward 50, getting stepped and giving Essendon and easy overlap off a bouncing loose-ish ball that could easily have been held up right there with better decelerating and pressing technique.

The Suns are a lot of better at balancing out their inside and outside game but fall in old habits here, with too many players getting too far into multiple contests and simply allowing the same 4 - 5 Essendon players to pressure about 8 different Gold Coast players.

Essendon lacking leadership and communication down back without Brooke Brown and failing to man up after a kick out of defensive 50 that comes straight back at them resulting an uncontested mark from a high ball 20m out from goal.

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