What is the most important skill in the game and how do you teach or coach it? – John
I’ll say kicking is the most vital skill, although they’re all very important. Kicking is something clubs look at very closely when they’re drafting players and certainly when selecting teams.
It probably is the most difficult skill to teach because it involves the hands and the arms and the legs and there’s a lot of co-ordination that needs to take place. You’ve got to have a good basic technique that will stand up under pressure. When you’re teaching that you need to look at how they grip the ball, how they drop the ball, the run-up they use, follow-through and body stance.
When you’re trying to teach younger players how to kick, they need small footballs because if the ball is too big for their hands it makes it really difficult for them to learn correct technique. Sometimes a player can look awkward but if he’s got all those basic components right, don’t try and change them too much.
You’ve got to allow for plenty of practice of basic technique, both on preferred and non-preferred sides. They say you need 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert so you should start kicking from a young age and learn the right technique from the start.
Videotaping players so they can see themselves and are aware of their own technique is very helpful. You talk about Generation Y – I think they do much better when they can actually see what it is they’re doing. If you can show them somebody who’s got a terrific technique then that gives them something which they can copy and aspire to. I think that’s a valid way to help teaching.
Science and technology plays such a big role now. At Hawthorn we have a fellow called David Rath who’s a biomechanist and a sports scientist, and helps with specialist advice on things like goalkicking.
How can you recreate a similar pressure to game day during training to help with goalkicking?
Once a player has a good basic technique, you need to encourage them to practice all sorts of different kicks. If you watch football now, particularly at the highest level, there are not many occasions where a player just kicks in a straight line from A to B. They have to learn things like being able to kick around a corner, a switch inside kick, kick to a player leading up at an angle or kick over the back to a player leading backwards. They’ve got to be able to kick short, kick long, checkside kicks and banana kicks, dribble kicks at goal. There are just so many kicks they need to learn and coaches need give them the opportunity to practice those kicks in drills. They’ve got to look at the way the game is played and set up drills to practice those kicks that occur in games.
Playing games at training is also important to teach players to use their skills, make decisions and execute.
You can’t just practice drills in isolation. You need to do small games or even 18-on-18 or 12-on-12, where the players actually have to use their kicking skills and handball skills and other skills, make decisions and execute.
Give the players feedback on how they’re going. If they’re a young player and they try a certain kick – even if they muck it up – if it’s the right sort of kick that they should have done in that situation, pat them on the back and say, ‘Well done, it was the right sort of kick, you just need to keep working on getting better at that’.
Junior coaches especially should watch carefully the kicks players choose to do during games and the way they execute, and be sure to give plenty of positive and constructive feedback on how they’re going.
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The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
