International Football: Breaking Bad Football Skills
Oct 16th, 2008 by Coach DeLorm
This is another guest post by Aussie football coach Dan Levin. He provides a great international flare to the blog and allows the rest of the coaching world to see how things are done down under.
By the time a player gets to high school, they’ve already had at least
3-4 years of playing experience at the junior high and pee-wee levels,
or if they haven’t, surely haven’t played another football code. As
such, coaching is as much about managing good technique as it is about
teaching new ones.
This is FAR from the case elsewhere in the world.
In Australia, we have two football codes (Aussie Rules & Rugby) which
are far and away more popular than football, which leads to tremendous
technique challenges. For example, in AFL, people receive passes with
the chest, a BIG no no for receivers. In Rugby, players drop their
head to protect their face in scrums, which is a great way for a
football player to end up in the hospital with a broken neck.
Because of this, my job, and the job of many other coaches, is to
break them of these bad habits and get them doing the right thing. As
a coach, the importance of simple, basic technique drills are
invaluable, and can mean the difference not only between winning and
losing, but the difference between a player being injured or not.
Football is a contact sport obviously, but so is Rugby and Aussie
Rules. The difference though, is the level and the degree of contact
involved with the sport. Even in Rugby, with rucks, scrums and
tackles, the consistency of contact and violence thereof is less than
football on any given play. The challenge is to get players to trust
that the pads will protect them and help them get through the contact,
rather than letting natural defensive insticts take over, such as
slowing down into hits and standing upright. AFL players have it
worse, because they turn their hips and shoulders into tackles, as
they’re taught to try and spin away from overpursuing defenders.
Obviously, that’s a great way to get bruised kidneys and broken ribs.
Here’s a couple of very basic drills to instill confidence with our players:
- Explosion Drill:
We don’t’ have sleds, but we do have bags/shields, so I get the whole
team exploding into bags out of a 4 point stance a few times, with
their head up looking through the bag to myself or another coach, who
is holding up fingers. Each player must shout out the number of
fingers, or they do 10 pushups.
- “Truck Drill”:
It’s the simplest drill you can imagine. Partner players up with
someone of their own size, then have one of them run into and through
the other at increasing speed. The guy getting “trucked” gradually
lowers his shoulders and starts stepping into the contact until it’s
100% speed. This teaches the runner to lower himself into contact,
and teaches tacklers that getting a shoulder in the chest really
really hurts!
If you have some tips or ticks on how to stop players from using those bad habits then please drop me a line on the contact form and your post could be up on the blog for thousands of coaches to see.
Great post that brings to life the differences in international sports and how to coach players used to a less forceful game. I find your blog to be very educational. Thanks