Winless Season

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cleo_2305

cleo_2305

Team Captain
Aug 6, 2006
305
18
Melbourne
AFL Club
Collingwood
Other Teams
Glenorchy, Claremont,
G'day guys, Took over an under 13's side down here in Tassie this year after being out of the coaching game for a couple of years. So far we have played 12 games and yet to get a win we have put on some good performances usually only lose by about 30-50 pts and have only had "one" smashing of 110pts to 0. This game was about 4 weeks ago and Ive struggled to get the boys motivated. My question is has anyone been in this situation before and have any tips how i can turn our season around ??
 
Yep, my 15's team a few years ago went 1-15 with an average losing margin of around 50 points. We played short most days too. I'd be offering to shout them all Nando's or something they all want if they get a win on the board. Make sure your training methods are up to scratch and above all, make it fun for them.
 
cleo_2305 said:
G'day guys, Took over an under 13's side down here in Tassie this year after being out of the coaching game for a couple of years. So far we have played 12 games and yet to get a win we have put on some good performances usually only lose by about 30-50 pts and have only had "one" smashing of 110pts to 0. This game was about 4 weeks ago and Ive struggled to get the boys motivated. My question is has anyone been in this situation before and have any tips how i can turn our season around ??
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Yes! Have coached a one-win season before (second last game of the year - phew!).

Not much fun but sometimes the team is just not up to the standard.

Only advice is to set smaller, more achievable goals and measure them.

Eg Getting an opponent caught holding the ball
Smothers
F50 entries
Keeping opposition below a certain score each quarter

Give players a chance to have some success by measures other than wins. Would there be dads willing to help keep some sort of stats like these? Rewards on offer for the players that do best.
 

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Yep been at both ends of this one. First year of under 10s lost every game (except one which won on forfeit) next year lost every game until the 2nd or 3rd last game. So I started my footy life with a record of 1-30.
The next two seasons went through undefeated premiers (won one game 233-0)followed by a season as premiers with one loss and then another losing two games and being runners up.
Thing is we had great coaches all through it all and looking back on it those first few years were just as much fun as the premiership years. Just make sure they have fun that was our number one goal.
 
played in a 1 win season in u14s.
I kicked 3 goals in that win on a day we won 8 goals to 4 or something :p

Interestingly, only once that year did we get beaten by mercy rule (90 points) Yet we kept it under 100.

The annoying thing though was the downward spiral we took
U11s - 2nd best team, only lost to the undefeated champions, went 0-5 vs them and undefeated vs everyone else.
U12s - Just missed finals, they combined 2 zones. we lost to only 2 teams from our own zone, but went 0-4 in our 4 games against teams from the old zone
U13s - Just missed finals, There was now 6 teams we couldn't beat, but we'd beat everyone else
U14s - Only beat 1 team all year. (The team I joined for u16s)
 
Thanks guys ! hoping we can turn it around tomorrow night we r playing the team above us on the ladder in the First night game at our local ground with the senior club coming along to watch hopefully the boys will be fired up by this !!
 
I've played in several winless seasons.

All I can say is just focus on individual efforts. Write down when you see someone doing the 1 percenters or something like that, and then during the coaching breaks, let them know they've done well as an individual. It's fairly important.

Other than that, just try to keep a positive vibe and as cliched as it sounds, make sure they have fun.
 
I'm captain of a side which has only had the one win, and it's hard trying to inspire the lads. A lot of them dont bother trying unless they know we're a chance of winning (which is only a few teams). I just give he challenge for each player to beat their man and go from there.
 

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Having played in several years of winless or one win seasons (one win this year for example), it starts with the basics and setting simple goals. Maybe a simple goal would be to break the game down into winning the first quarter, then the 2nd etc. Or if the team is obviously more talented than yours (which can happen) then the goal could be to keep a team under 100 points and score yourselves or something like that.
 
Set goals for effort rather than results and give high praise for one percenters and build from there. Focus on never giving up until the final siren goes. Always praise players who put in the effort as a coaches praise can be extremely uplifting. You have to learn how to lose before you learn how to win.
 
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