Coaching Footy Attacking the football

[Michaels]

What types of drills have you all used / been involved in that focuses on attacking the ball and the contest hard? My team was second to the ball a little too much on the weekend.

Any tips?

 

[Ghossein]

have them get in 2 lines, then have them come out in pairs (one bloke from each line), basically in a 1 v 1 type thing.

roll the ball to them and have them both fight/body each other to try and get the ball back to them. once they get it back to you dish it out again immediately, throw it to space and keep them bodying each other and fighting for the ball.

do this 3-4 times (they will get too tired after this point) then swap the pairs.

additions:
if you really want to murder them (i love doing this to the ones that muck around at training), when they dish it back to you after fighting for it, bomb it as long as you can and have them race to get it, then try and work it 50 meters to get it back to you.

you can also get them coming out in 2's (so 2 vs. 2). this will get players trying to communicate with their teammate and try and work it out together (1 shepperds, handball it past opponents, etc)

 

[Ghossein]

but in terms of attacking the contest, i've found players attack contests a lot harder when:

A) they feel very comfortable with the physical contact/it has been practiced at training

B) psychologically they feel they are greater than their opponent and can beat him/are stronger

C) if the general match momentum is in a teams favour the players get fired up and want to win the contested footy

do you do any body work at training?

 

[Michaels]

Thanks for that Ghossein.

We have been doing that exact drill you mentioned the last few weeks, i have noticed a bit of a difference in their attack on the ball which is good. and as you mentioned, great for a work out!

Most drills we do are all game sense type drills, and almost always with defenders / pressure, so they cop bumps and get tackled all the time at training. i dont like doing pressureless drills too often.

I think a lot of it now is a mental thing, two weeks ago they went in hard for the ball all day and we won the game. So im hoping that they build on that. Unfortunately we had the bye last week which really hurts in terms of momentum.

But we will definitely keep doing those 1 v 1, 2 v 2 drills to stay on top of it.