THE JUNIOR FOOTY FINALS FURORE

                                          

This situation a junior football league in Melbourne has got itself into, has been doing the social media rounds this week

https://twitter.com/9NewsMelb/status/1696801872890265679

Now I must state from the start that I haven't had access to any of the news articles floating around about this as they're all behind paywalls, but I have been able to pick a fair bit from reading far too many comments on the situation.

THIS IS 2 DIFFERENT ISSUES

My understanding is that the league moved the finals games from a Sunday to a Tuesday - a weird choice in anyone's world, and 1 the team that finished on top by a stretch (with a % of 300%) are away on camp that Tuesday and had to forfeit that game but they finished on top and have the double chance so live to fight another day, but still not a great look to change the day and they said they;d work with clubs in the scheduling so I'm not sure what's happened here.

The other issue isn't, which isn't even an issue and is explained here - the ladder is cut in half with the top 5 playing the "real" finals series to determine the grand final winner and the bottom 5 playing their own finals series as "reserves".

That's it.

WORDING

Knowing that everyone is on the "kids need to learn how to lose"  and "everyone gets an award" train, the league could have done a better job then saying all 10 teams will be playing finals and simply saying something along the lines of "while the top 5 will play off to determine the Grand Final winner for 2023, the bottom 5 will also play off against each other in the interest of player participation, enjoyment and retention." 

I actually think it's a great idea as there's no harm in those bottom teams getting some extra footy game time and in a competitive game as the last game/s of the season as most kids will remember those games more so then the round 1 thrashing back in April.

This does wonders for overall enjoyment and retention for next year.

KIDS DON'T KNOW HOW TO LOSE

This is ridiculous as the bottom teams lose 3 out of every 4 games at least - they've lost and often lost badly, all year long.

You think they're not good at losing?

The fact they turn up every week shows that they do know how to lose and I suspect that parents and coaches are the one's that need to learn how to lose, in a lot of cases.

If you want kids to learn how to lose then I posted this on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/AFLTraining/status/1697223743716925914?s=20

KEEPING SCORE

I'm on board with not keeping scores until under 12's or even older if you really wanted to but to say everyone keeps score so it doesn't matter doesn't make it right either.

I don't know about you but my 12 and a half year old isn't so sharp at maths he can play a full game of footy and keep the exact score count at the same time.

I'd go even further and argue that those who are counting the score in their head aren't really giving their all in the actual game either as per the cognitive load theory (look it up if you need to).

And the fact that they're focusing on the score and thus the outcome, and not the process of building that outcome, means there is close to zero player learning occurring and also only builds them into people who have to do something (play footy) to get something else (the win and subsequent ego boost).

Once the winning goes away what are you left with?

Once players move up age groups and it's more about skill and game intelligence over big kids dominating little kids, they're no longer equipped to compete, enjoyment decreases dramatically and they drop out altogether.

IF YOU WANT TO PLAY FINALS THEN WORK HARDER AND GET BETTER

Great in theory but horrible in practice.

Like senior teams, there are powerhouse junior football clubs and these clubs can field 5 or more teams in the same age group.

My son's team is a very successful division 1 senior team but is a tiny suburb between 2 giant suburbs.

We field mostly 1 team in each age group while our 2 neighboring teams field teams in pretty much every division of every age group.

So in our 1 team we'll have players better suited to playing 2 - 3 divisions below what they do at our club but because we have 1 team per game, a lot of them play up relative to their ability and experience.

We played division 2 this year with payers better suited to divisions 3, 4 and probably 5 versus teams full of division 2 quality players and probably a few who get squeezed out of their division 1 teams simply based on their huge player numbers.

In the last few years our really top players ion my son's team have gone to these powerhouse clubs so "they can play division 1" at under 12 level!

If I may go back a point, moving teams to play in better teams isn't really teaching your child about the ups and downs of life is it now? And loyalty's already out the window at a young age too.

You can't simply get better when you struggle every year as kids drop out and move teams and you;re just trying to get enough players to fill your team each week let alone actually have players long enough to actually develop them, unlike the powerhouse junior clubs.

I'm not having a crack at the powerhouse clubs, they so a super job but something just doesn't sit right with me when some clubs struggle for 1 team when others have 5 but I still don't have an answer on what to do about that personally but if you do, I'm all ears.

WHERE DOES WINNING REALLY RANK?

There is a study that looked at what makes sport fun for kids and although it was done in the US, kids are pretty universal in what they like and why they like it - every kids loves Fortnite regardless of where they're from but the game is the same everywhere.

It had kids rate 81 different reasons for enjoying sport with girls mostly opting for social aspects and friendships and boys going with competition, copying their hero's, improving their skills and progressing to higher levels. Both sexes ticked boxes for trying your best, working hard, staying active and playing well together as a team.

Where did winning finish?

40th out of 81.

I'll leave it at that.

DEVELOPING TRAINING ACTIVITIES FROM YOUR GAME ANALYSIS

Earlier this week I wrote about how I go about analysing games and the process around that and once you've got data, then you can really start pinpointing specific things to address within your training sessions.

I also listed a lot of the common scenarios that I noticed play out in almost every game of football and that's pretty much your starting point.

For example here is a still image from one of my AFLW clips:

The Saints have won back possession and are pushing forward but Collingwood have their spare defender loose behind the play (Livingstone), delaying the Saints transition offense.

When playing against teams with loose or extra defenders behind the ball you'll run into this situation very often as you've probably experienced but unless you've trained to work around it,then you'll struggle for players to get brand new instruction and instantly change the way they're able to play within a single game. 

You can't coach on game day what you haven't trained/taught previously.

From the image above you can start developing your training practices directly off of your game analysis by...

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MY GAME ANALYSIS PROCESS

                          

AFLW kicks off this weekend and as usual I'm super-pumped as more footy is always a positive, especially when the AFLW season runs past the AFLM season.

I watched every game of every season so far and have analysed games to some degree for all of those 7 seasons as well.

In the last 2 seasons I've done pretty detailed videos of what I see when I'm watching, which I do with a coaches hat on and really once you starts to do that then you watch all footy like that.

In season 6 alone I posted almost 950 clips over almost 18hrs on my Youtube channel, with about 50% of that again in season 7.

All of the Game/Training Scenarios from the level 4 membership are taken from these 2 seasons.

WHY DO I ANALYSE AFLW OVER AFLM?

I love analysing the AFLW over the AFL because the game is slower and played in tighter confines where more ground is covered in the same camera shot compared to the men''s which happens a lot quicker and over a lot more ground area where you really need behind the goals footage to go deep with your analysis, and is what men's teams rely on the most.

Once again I'll do some analysing but I'm still trying to think up a different way that I can do it as the time outlay to watch, analyse then go back and edit for all games can be quite time consuming so I need something a bit more efficient and effective at the same time.

WHAT HAVE I FOUND IN MY ANALYSIS?

The purpose of my analysis is to find...

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PLAY FORM ACTVITIES STUDY

                                      

These notes come from a study I read a week or 2 ago about the use of play form activities during practice, looking at the why, how and benefits of doing so.

• Precisely simulates the properties of competition games in customised settings (contexts) designed to provide many opportunities for the emergence of focused actions/sequences of play
• Can provide rich opportunities to use perception, cognition and actions during learning whilst challenging players to engage in decision making, problem solving and co-positioning
• You need to customise play form activity configurations and manipulate their characteristics to reach specific objectives for which guidelines are not standardised
• Such formats can be used to substantiate a theme assigned to a training session or programme, in terms of the specific affordances or possibilities of play it is designed to offer the players
• Create play form activities within competition contexts
• Due to their mouldable nature, play form activities reflect varying contexts of play and are purposefully designed to emphasise the chosen theme
• They can also be modified/manipulated to provide opportunities for players to adapt their performance behaviors via changing their structure and organisation without taking away their principled intentionality to overcome the opposition to score, and to stop the opposition from scoring
• The existence of the key task constraints of opposition and scoring targets (goals/gates etc) are therefore non-negotiables for practice to keep the highest degree of representation
• Playing areas can be configured into different shapes and playing numbers can be dis/advantaged which can influence the player interactions that emerge and both translate to the time afforded to players to perceive information and make decisions in a space of play they are challenged to manage
• Coaches can scale/shape practice with the specific aim to match the current needs of players based on skill level, experience and proximity to competition
• Play form activities are framed portions of the game that ignite sought responses as opposed to pinpointing single actions in unrestricted contexts of play
• They can also differ from the original structure by changing playing area shape and the location of scoring targets
• Scoring targets facing each other like normal = actions played in width/depth (standard)
• Scoring targets facing each other + in the middle = actions performed inwards and outwards (centric)
• Scoring targets both located in the middle = actions performed around them (circular)
• Players can be encouraged to self organise (reposition themselves) and self regulate (manage behavior, reactions, feelings and surroundings) according to their intentions and competences to reach scoring targets
• Younger players need a good dose of centric/circular lay outs because the set up naturally sends them into wider areas but they can also diverge so far from the original structure of the game that it can drag players away from their collective organisation, specifically in preparation for competition, because of its lack of representative design
• In new contexts, self efficacy often restricts decision making and action regulation to the point that it affects the usual performance of players, sometimes negatively
• In most training training contexts, challenging circumstances are mostly created under affordance constraints of less space and time to make decisions and perform actions, or to solve the same problems playing with uneven numbers
• In small scaled playing areas, players have less time and space to perform stable actions (what they usually do) which disrupts maintenance of self-efficacy like keeping possession of the ball
• Activities should be configured to provoke intentionality in behaviors, acknowledging that efficacy in play requires time to adapt/attune to new movement tempos and space before achieving intended outcomes
• Space and time designed into activities make affordances available such as distances that emerge between players
• 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 which is problematic for player development if it leads them to not take risks or to simply play like always relying on speed and territory-based ball movement when you're able to play more slow/medium tempo footy and maintain possession for longer to have a greater impact on that particular play
• Task complexity and difficulty of contexts of play must be calibrated according to the experience and skill level of the player/s
• More complex contexts are depicted by the quality and quantity of information which results in the current case from their configuration
• Overwhelming levels of information can lead to more confusion and less success, especially if there is competition between augmented information from the coach and that which emerges during player interactions
• Complex situations can also provoke reinvestment strategies in players making them think more and decide less and inhibit them from enhancing their capacity to self regulate and maintain flow of performance
• Task complexity is based on the number of possibilities for actions and the number of opposition
• Activities can therefore be designed to decrease the number of action possibilities, guiding players towards specific solutions in an affordance landscape, or to challenge them in achieving specific contents, themes or outcomes in the play
• Any opportunity to practice should involve decision making and problem solving in game contexts
• Well designed play for practice can maintain the context and act of playing relevant to the development of the individuals involved
• Open ended practice refers to the use of small/isolated slices of the game
• Small sided conditioning games are small sided games with varying dimensions
• Analytical games refers to the use of bigger and more team-cohesive slices of the game
• Conditioning games use similar dimensions and player numbers to competition
• Full games can also be used
• Search solicits skill sets (technical/cognitive etc) altogether since it demands to change execution simultaneously whilst articulating all cognitive mechanisms to determine the best action to perform which often discriminates skill levels according to the complexity of the solutions to find
• Formats and their configurations thus result in different implications for practice even if they are all driven by the aim to repeat (the solving of a performance problem) without repeating (the same tech)
• The idea of specific intention assigned to each format becomes clear if the field of affordances and their arrangement are valid for the intended actions/training loads
• Formats finally gather the configurations that will most likely result in positive influences on player performance behaviors, making activities more motivating or playable
• As you progress through the different game levels, the environment supplies players with more affordances, higher repetition, increased difficulty and overall realism as the branches of affordance bandwidth increase
• The purpose of open ended drills is to practice simple actions and decisions, is execution driven, has direct individual opponent context, individual intention with the concepts of how/execution and when/simple cues
• Small sided conditioning games have the same actions in a changing environment, theme based context and group intention with the what/intentions and the why/game sense
• Analytical games involve the practicing actions in specific game-related contexts, is situation driven, uses specific situations of play context, is sectorial, is oriented by theme and desired solution with a focus on the who/roles + what/intentions + when/synchronised cues + how/execution
• Conditioning games insert actions in an adapted game context, specific moment and theme through constraints with a focus on the who/roles + what/intentions + when/synchronised cues + where/area context
• Full games prepare performance in competition contexts, is competition/scenario driven, includes the whole team, is realistic to performance with a focus on the who/roles + what/intentions + when/moment + where/area + how/execution
• For coaches to implement play form activity, they should begin from the respective age’s full game (5v5, 7v7, 9v9, 11v11 etc) and dissect the play into smaller parts, beginning from an action/sequence of play in the full game and going from there

COLLINGWOOD COMING FORWARD DEFENSE VIDEO

I've highlighted this a few times this season but this is maybe the best example of it that's been captured so far.

There are training activities that Collingwood use to train this coming forward action that you can find in both the Pre and In-season Collingwood Training Activities manuals that you can find out more about by clicking on their respective hyperlinks.

Here's the clip of it I posted to Twitter Friday night and some specifics about it below...

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FULL GROUND TRAINING STRUCTURE

                                                       

I found this in my files from a couple of years ago which is an idea around training that is game simulated.

It's definitely not something you'd do early in your pre-season but only after players have had the chance to get to know the game model and also have a fair idea of what part of the ground you'll be playing them in during the season.

Anyway it starts with a stoppage on the mid wing boundary area for simplicity sake and works form there with formation and the roles and responsibilities of the team lines (defense, mids and forwards) and the individuals within it.

I've only used 9 players per team here again for simplicity sake but as you go along you can add players in to each line which will increase the need for efficient and effective communication between players as there's more people who need to know what's going on all at the same time...

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3 COLLINGWOOD CLIPS v GEELONG

After a slow start, Collingwood overpowered Geelong Friday night to lock in top spot for season 2023.

Here are 3 clips I posted on Twitter during the game but can now expand upon them further then 140 characters.

#1 - JAMIE ELLIOTT PAUSE

#2 - COLLINGWOOD TRUST

#3 - JOSH DAICOS KICK

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ACHIEVING FOOTBALL MASTERY PART 3/3

                                          

Earlier in the week I posted about the theory behind mastery and what behaviors you should be focused on to achieve it and then I posted the first 9 videos showing mastery, or alack of it, in game situations.

Here's the other 9.

#10...

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ACHIEVING FOOTBALL MASTERY PART 2/3

Coming off the back of Kingy talking about Darcy Moore and positional mastery on First Crack Sunday night, earlier this week I posted the theory behind mastery and some of the behaviors behind it.

Today we look at mastery, or a lack thereof, in game situations with these 9 video clips, with the other 9 coming tomorrow.

#1 - Finding and taking the most open option over kicking long to a contested situation, is mastery the art of maintaining possession and is not just the kicker's responsibility, but also their teammates (shared affordances) to find open positions to receive the ball in...

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ACHIEVING FOOTBALL MASTERY PART 1/3

                                         

During my weekly watch of Fox Footy's Last Crack on a Sunday night at the completion of each round, Kingy had this to say about Darcy Moore and his missed kicks out of defensive 50 over the last couple of weeks:

"...he's the interceptor, the rebounder - give it to the point guards...he doesn't need to be the laser by leg...what’s your role in the team, let the play-makers play, give the easy one’s, give what’s available, take what the opposition gives you and don’t try and over-create too much..."

I've been trying to find an angle on how to do a post on mastery for at least a year now and now I've found it so here we go.

To help explain these better and for you to see what they look like, later in the week I'll post 18 short clips of both behaviors in actual game situations but here's some theory behind mastery first.

There's 2 behavior-driven ways that football is usually played by and that's mastery and ego...

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THE INFLUENCE OF SCORING MODE ON PASSING ACTIONS (STUDY)

I read this study this past week and the results should really give coaches food for thought in designing their practice sessions and plenty of actionable conclusions as well.

It looked at the passing actions during 4v4 games of Soccer on a 30x20m pitch featuring junior players of various ages with the 3 different scoring modes - end line goals, double goals and central goals.

The end line goal is a 2 - 3m zone running the width of the pitch the ball needs to land in and if it rolls out then it doesn't count...

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RICHMOND PRE-GAME WARM UP ACTIVITIES

I ventured to the Richmond/Sydney game about a month ago and actually managed to get there early which is rare so I was able to get a look at some of the pre-game activities Richmond went through as I was up their end.

I'm always interested to see what teams do pre-game as they are usually specific slices of the game, as most training activities should be, albeit without much, or any, opposition.

There aren't much to these but even though this is an AFL team, it still shows how simple most of the stuff they do actually is, but at a greater intensity and attention to detail then what we do at local level where we can often try too hard to cram 10 things into the 1 activity and learning, thus transfer, never really seems to happen for as many players as we hope it will. 

The first activity is...

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