FOOTBALL today has become entrenched in KPIs. As a coach you are continuously analysing and evaluating your team’s performance week to week.

What patterns are emerging game to game? Do we take enough shots on? Do we retain a high percentage of our kickouts, where do we win them? What’s our possessions lost column reading like and are we gifting the opposition a dozen scorable frees per game? And the data is invaluable in how we shape and progress our teams, when data transcends into reliable and practical information then we are on to a winner.

There is however a scoreboard recently installed at the gable end of our clubhouse overlooking the main pitch, and it never relays any other in-game data except the score line, doing its job essentially. From a coaching perspective it’s easy to be consumed with the finer details, we can become obsessed with fine tuning. Set plays being the order of the day. Setting up in and out of possession, scenario football.

But what we should never neglect is the subtle art of players having the confidence and the developed skill level to comprehensively kick the ball over the bar from 30 meters. That must be a baseline for every club player in Ulster.

The game has become too fluid. Today we become attackers when we are in possession, and we switch to defender mode when we don’t have the ball. In fact, the way the game has progressed you can make an argument to say that players in your traditional full back line positions now act as playmakers.

They arguably get more soft possessions in game than middle-eight players, and it will pay off if these players are coached to behave like forwards when given the opportunity to venture forward.

We can break down how to improve a player’s ability to get themselves on the score sheet with more regularity by implementing the following steps.

Unopposed Practise

As simple as it sounds really. You and a bag of footballs. Getting familiar with areas on the pitch in relation to the positioning of the goal posts.

The best advice is to stay close to goal initially and practise scenarios with back to goal, central, wide right and wide left. Kicking between the 14 Meter line and the confines of the D will be sufficient early on especially if you are a defender by nature.

Areas to improve

Use of ‘breaker strides’ to steady yourself and ensure your kicking with balance and whilst not trying to move at 100MPh

Head down over the ball and kicking foot elevated to around 90 degrees at the hip ensuring a nice clean follow through on the ball.

Unopposed practice can then be increased to include kicking on the run whilst breaking through lines and including non-contact evasion drills whereby the player must sidestep opposition before executing the kick.

Unopposed Practise
– Competitive

Simply crank up the pressure by setting targets for the player. A minimum number of scores required from a certain area in a required team period for example. This way we are testing the players ability to perform the practise in a controlled but challenging environment.

Opposed

Once we look to test the players in an opposed environment the best way to start is often to have kickers being closed down by covering players, essentially giving them a chance to get a shot off but with a covering defender arriving into the shooter’s space within a certain time frame to close the shot down.

This will begin to sharpen the kickers decision making knowing that pressure is incoming they will be encouraged to take their shots on at a more game realistic pace. We Can then develop this further by creating any one of several one-on-one scenarios. Now testing the kicker with a direct opponent hunting down their every step.

Opposed – Game

Finally, the acid test arrives when players are asked to replicate their practice in a game scenario. If the player has been applying themselves diligently to the above steps, then soon the benefits of increased awareness and composure should start paying dividends in games.