I recently gave a short talk to a group of year 12 students about how we go about training and playing at the elite level. I touched briefly on the importance of developing "thinking players" - players who have the ability, with or without the ball, to be aware of the important cues in the ...
coaching resources for Australian Football (AFL) and other team sports
Tag Archive: defense
Importance of Transition Play
I have written about transition play in a previous post but wanted to delve into it a little bit more. It is interesting to observe the game of Australian Football evolve at the elite level. Over the last couple of years the ability of the defending team to restrict the time and space available to ...
Coaching Style of Play in AFL – Rob Wiley Videos
Whilst this site covers all team sports it is specifically aimed at Australian Football (AFL). One of the reasons for this was that, when we started the site earlier this year, there was a real lack of quality online resources and information available. Hopefully we are contributing to wards changing that.
Our 1st Coaching E-book – Developing a Playing System
There hasn't been much action in the way of new posts in the last couple of weeks. The reason for this is we have been busy applying the finishing touches to our 1st ebook called "Developing a Playing System - The 4 Stage Coaching Blueprint". This is a completely ...
Oh no! The opposition have worked out our system/style of play – what now?
Here is the scenario. You are a new coach implementing a system or style of play. In Australian Football (AFL) this could be systems related to counter-attack plays out of defense, kick ins, stoppage setups/exit plays, or forward entry. You carefully design and implement your training activities and teaching methods to fast-track your players in ...
Observing “off the ball” when coaching in training or games
Watch the video below for some thoughts on the importance of coaches observing "off the ball" during training drills and games. Interested in being updated via email of new content on this site? Click here
Game Style Moments in Australian Football (part 2)
In this previous post we began to look at some video examples of what I call "game style moments" - certain situations in the game where the game style you coach is on display. Examples in the first post were entries into the forward line, slow play at half back and defenders ...
Making a system work – Lombardi
Hoopthoughts (hoopthoughts.blogspot.com) has a nice short post on an excerpt from a Vince Lombardi book about practice, precision and persistence. Read the post here. This tickled my fancy because Lombardi is really referring to what makes any system of play in any sport successful - the execution of the fundamentals and the ...
Defensive Transition Principles
Recently we posted an article on the counter-attack in Australian Football, both from an offensive and defensive viewpoint. In basketball this play is referred to as a 'fast break' or 'transition' - a time when possession is lost by one team and hence gained by the other. This transition phase is ...
The Counter-Attack in Australian Football
The following article was first published in 2005 as part of my Level 3 coaching accreditation. Whilst some of the statistics quoted below are now different and indeed some of my thoughts have evolved, I thought it was still worth posting in order to generate some ideas and get coaches thinking about this aspect of ...