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overhaul, and that it happens to literally everyone, but at least you're trying to grow as a coach and not just rehash out-of-date coaching practices where any success you might have is mostly in spite of how and what and you're training your players - but if I choose one from the list in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.

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