Coaching Footy Some help scheduling french footy trainings

[FroggyMate]

Hi all,

I'm the Strasbourg Kangaroos coach in France. I don't have any coach or trainer skills and try to make my team improve with what I see on AFL games or from my rugby origins.

This year we finaly got a quite good team and I really would like to make it serious in order to reach our real level and win the championship.

Our big problem is first fitness/endurance, and then basics (kick, mark, shepherd...). And I don't speak about our big problem on the field: organisation. In fact we have difficulties loosing our soccer and rugby point of view!!

So here is a first version of the program I would like to do for season starting:
First period: 1 month of fitness/endurance, with the very basics. Will be 2 trainings per week with 1h of fitness/endurance and 30min of basics (kicks, marks, handpass...).
Second period: Quite the same with the first one, but with objectives.
Third period: less fitness and more play to apply basic and teach some tactics.

The two first periods would be to improve fitness and skills for footy (jump, hands, legs strengh...) and then tactics.

From this now what I really would like is drills to improve fitness/endurance for footy, and then to improve our basics. So I would like to know if you have some drills to share or if you know some websites (free if possible) where I could find some helps to make good training sessions.

Thanks a lot

 

[cptkirk]

skills is your biggest obstacle - really hammer that home but don't do it while your tired, do before any running/fitness work

just simple lane work should be enough initially then make up a drill that incorporates kicking, running, marking and hand balling at the same time once they have been worked on individually

i'm not sure if we can post websites on here though but i actually run one

 

[carnthepies19]

Make sure before each session you do stretches and a warm up jog, as a group. Then you can get started on the skills, depending on how many come to the training, you could do a drill (this will probably only work if you have a marked out ground with goal squares, but you can still make your own little box with cones marking it out if you don't have that. Choose 14 people at a time to participate in the drill, give 7 of them a sash/bib etc. something that will make them know who's in their team. Then put in 1 footy to one group of 7 (let's use the sash team as an example), they have to try and handball the ball to eachother so that each player gives at least one handball and the other team is supposed to try and get the ball off of them and intercept the passes. The team with the sashes will need to sheppard the opposition out of the way so that the sash team can win. Swap the teams around so the non sash team get to have the ball, then swap players so that each player gets a turn on each team. The aim of this is to a) sheppard in a small space, this useful when the opposition are flooding into your forward line, you will be able to give your teamates more time, b) TALK! Most footy teams don't talk nearly enough. It can be a simple 'you're hot' which in footy talk translates to 'the opposition are near you get rid of the ball' or just calling out the player with the ball's name, so they notice the other players are available to pass to. It would be useful to double check that everyone knows eachother's names first . c) The non sash team in this drill learn to intercept the ball in a tight space and the defensive pressure needed all around the ground. d) The handballing needs to be pinpoint accurate in this drill, it also gives a sense of a real game situation. Another drill to try to sharpen up the skills could be to have the players lined up in two lines then split each line and half of the line goes 3 or so meters away so the lines are still straight and then the first player of each line on one half of it throws the ball up high in the air towards the first player of the other half of the line so he marks it, then he bowls (I don't know how to describe it, it's really a bowling motion except the ball more bounces along that rolls) as fast as he can and the player on the other end of the line has to pick it up whilst on the run. Then the circuit continues, each player goes to the end of the line he passed it too incase that wasn't clear. (NOTE: This is called lane work if you didn't get how I explained that drill, if you don't know what it is google search it. They will probably explain it better than I have) A couple of things for endurance/fitness could be: running around an oval or around the block (something where you continue the same circuit) as a group, then you have a start/finish marked out - this could be a tree or landmark, and the person who is the last one past the marker has to do either 50 pushups or one suicide run - that is where there are 5 or so cones in a straight line (you can do this on a basketball/netball court) and you have to run from the start to the first marker and back then to the second marker then back to the start and so on, it is mean to be done sprinting. You can repeat the drill once or twice to start off then gradually increase the repititions. You can also take a couple of footys with the group so they can practice bouncing the ball and handballing whilst running at a reasonable pace. You can do plain suicide runs by themselves or a 10 minute time trial, where you lay out a cone every (roughly) 20m 's around the oval and have a start/finish line. The aim of this is for all of the players to run as far as they individually can in 10 minutes. Each cone they pass is worth 20 meters so if they count how many laps they have done when the 10 minutes are up then multiply that by the amount of cones there are in a lap then add on how many cones they passed on the incompleted lap then there should be how far they've run. Then write down everyone's totals and every time you do that excercise they have to do a better amount of meters than the last time. If they don't improve then that player has to do a punishment decided by the remainder of the team. (yep, iot can get pretty nasty if your team is a funny bunch) The punishment however has to be training related.
I hope you could understand that, and if you want any other ideas just tell me

 

[FroggyMate]

@cptkirk: good idea having skill drills before running too much. We use to do it at the end of the session and it's very often a big mess as everyone is tired.

@carnthepies19: we work a lot with what you said. A lot of in line drill and attack/defense in a square. You are right the big problem is very often TALKING and it's one of the main project for this season. And I think we'll do lot's of those exercices and thanks for the one second drill I didn't know this one!

I really need having more drills, I managed to find some on the web and try to transform rugby ones but it's getting always the same... So if you have other ones or web sites maybe you could send it to me by private message.

And what I really would like to find is game skills drills. To get more organised on a ruck, throw-in and even more when there is a man on the ground with the ball. The most important for me is to manage making us play footy and getting rid of our rugby skills (all in one block and getting forward as a line) or soccer skills (beeing sacred of off-sides and all getting forward at the same time). Do you think there are drils to know how to make a real footy lead, staying in his zone (forward, back...) or do you think only game practice could solve that?

Anyway thanks for your answers.

 

[Lolaser]

A good drill to get everyone involved and practicing gameday situations and the like is to set up a ruck situation about 60 metres out from the goals. Have one ruck and two/three midfielders (start with two as otherwise the rugby tackling will come in and you won't get the ball out) on each team. Then have two defenders and two forwards in the square, the forwards have to lead out in two different ways and the defenders have to try and keep up and prevent the lead from being effective. The midfielders and rucks try and clear the ball and make a quick decision about which lead is better.

NOTE: The forwards and defenders are not on any teams, so either midfield/ruck side can kick to any forward.

This drill helps forwards make good leading decisions and also helps midfielders make snap decisions like they would in a game. Also you can run two sets of the drill at the same time, with each drill kicking a different way.


A good skills drill is to get two lines of handballing very close to each other, so each side of the line is about 2/3 metres apart and the two seperate lines intersect to form a cross. Then both lines handball it on the move, ensuring they dodge the other line and hit an effective handball.

 

[FroggyMate]

Thanks Lolaser, the ruck drill is a good one I'll try it asap! For the cross handballing one we use to do it, but unfortunatly most of the players take cara of the crossing player and don't really do a good handball. But I'll do it more and more maybe it'll help some of them getting less scary of bumping.

 

[Lolaser]

One last drill to improve contested footy is to split the group of players into two even groups. Then assign one person from each group the number one, one group from each group number two and so on until everyone is in a pair.

Then have each team lay face down in a line about ten metres apart from each other facing away from the space in between. Then throw a footy in the middle of them and call out a combination of numbers. Each person with the called out numbers gets up and contests for the footy and it is the aim of each team to dispose of the ball back to you. Good for improving reaction times and courage in getting under the ball and pulling it out of contests.