Kick Ins ???

[troppo]

Our plan A seems to be all targets spred out but remain stationary leaving the kicker with no alternative but to go short to the pocket.

Plan B seems to be to kick long to a contest.

Plan C Refer plan A

Plan D See above

I did notice one team use "the huddle" over the weekend. Even that would be better on some occassions than what we have been doing but whatever we do it needs a lot more work.

 

[JHF1870]

Didn't Drummond kick long straight down the centre a number of times? possibly while Mitch Clarke and luenberger were there.

LEts face it this year is going to be tough for the player kicking in. I think you gotta kick it short and just run.

 

[lions_den]

Drummond should chip to him self, run 5-10m and clear the zone with his sexy foot skills. Such a waste of the best kick in the league to be chipping to the pockets, especially to blokes like Merrett.

 

[chopperduck]

Having that release player in the pocket is fine for a get out of jail if there is nothing to kick to, but we use it far too much. We need to move the ball quicker from the kick ins before they get their zone set up. Upon saying that, Port had a real heavy zone happening in the 50, but they had little to no one past our HB position, which is why those few times we got it long it completely opened up.

If we are going to play 2 rucks on the field at the same time we should have these guys as the target for the kick ins, one on each side of the field, and our other players should be getting to them to help in the contest and/or mop up the crumbs. When teams set up in a zone so much, kicking 50m gets past a lot of the players, we can and should out number them at that marking contest.

The other thing i would like to see is one player running down the middle back towards drummond when kicking it in and giving him a block on the man defending him so he can take possession, run 5-10 meters and boot it to the center square.

If teams are going to zone and guard space in our back 50 for kick ins, lets let them guard empty space and group our guys towards one area more, get numbers around the contest and go from there. Its better than trying to chip kick our way out through all the area they are guarding.

 

[PertRoosOsborne]

Upon saying that, Port had a real heavy zone happening in the 50, but they had little to no one past our HB position, which is why those few times we got it long it completely opened up.

Yep good point....port seemed very keen to lock down space all over the ground.

What concerned me was how easily port were able to move the ball from their kick ins to the forward line - often there were no Lions players anywere near the ball.

We were very lucky that their kicking to a forward target was poor and that our defenders had a great game.

 

[LuckyLuke]

If teams are going to zone and guard space in our back 50 for kick ins, lets let them guard empty space and group our guys towards one area more, get numbers around the contest and go from there. Its better than trying to chip kick our way out through all the area they are guarding.

One issue with that is that if the opposition do happen to win a contested possession they can quickly bomb it long across the ground to a free player. Not saying its the wrong thing to do, but there still needs to be some defensive thought to that tactic.

You can clearly see that we are trying to run the ball out of our back 50 this year with linking handballs. However, it wont work if those linking handballs are backwards to stationary players. I'd be all for Vossy trying some different tactics during games if we are up by 50 points in the last qtr, as frustrating as that is to watch.