AGC #009 - Steal, innovate, share

One of my favorite pieces of coaching advice I’ve ever received is:

Steal, innovate, share.

It’s a straightforward concept: rob someone else’s idea, put your own twist on it, and then put it out into the universe for someone else to do the same.

Like many coaches, earlier in my career I was afraid to share things with anyone, either for fear of ridicule or giving an opponent an advantage.

But I’ve learned that the more you share, the more you get back. So in that spirit, here are three field hockey exercises I “remixed” after first seeing them somewhere else.

Feel free to take them and adapt them to your own team or sport - and let me know what you do with them!

Game 1: Score and Move

I first came across this concept in Dan Wright’s 50 Small-Sided Games ebook.

The original

The idea is simple: three games on three different pitches happening concurrently, and if you score on one pitch you must move to another. The scores on all three pitches are added up to determine the winner.

This is a neat way of manufacturing uneven teams and randomized underload/overload situations and opens up opportunities for players to strategize and try to “game” the scenario.

The remix

Initial exploration involved making the pitches different shapes and sizes, only allowing specific goalscoring techniques, or having certain scoring constraints on a given field (e.g. all players must touch the ball during the move for the goal to count).

A delve into the psychosocial side - allowing the players to choose how many players they start with on each field, adding a rule that the team with the most prolific individual goalscorer wins - also proved fruitful.

But the version of this I’ve enjoyed the most to date makes these three changes together:

• Two fields instead of three

• Players can move freely between both fields

• Your team must win the game on both fields

You will quickly find out who on your team is willing to take charge and take risks in order to succeed, and who will wait for others to lead them.

Listen out for the communication too - firstly, whether it’s happening at all, and secondly, whether is it informational (“We are one up over here!”) or organizational (“John and Bob, I need you both on this pitch immediately!”).

It is tougher than you might expect to win both games, so this is a great one for a day when you want to stress-test your group. Keep trying it until they can figure out a winning strategy!

Game 2: Multidirectional Hockey

his game blew my mind when I first watched Mick McKinnon - one of my first coaching mentors, and to this day the most impactful one - coach it about a decade ago. I couldn’t wait to both play and coach it.

The original

Multidirectional Hockey is a 7 v 7, half-pitch game with three zones, that each have a goal and a goalkeeper in them.

Each team can score in any goal, but they must move the ball to a different zone than the one they won it in first. The coach umpires from a safe zone in the middle, and restarts play with a randomized new ball feed anytime it goes out of play.

You can use this game to teach, or get reps of, practically any skill in field hockey.

However, I’ve found it especially useful for vision and awareness, in-possession decision-making, and understanding which is the most advantageous zone to attack based on the numerical situation and available space.

The remix

Making this a three-team game, with 4 players on each side, opens up numerous possibilities.

It becomes a 4 v 8 in possession, which will make scoring that bit harder, but still achievable if you can quickly identify which area presents the best opportunity.

Having fewer players on each team gives higher levels of individual ownership and responsibility, and the increased task difficulty can help see who rises to the occasion.

A fun one is to put your defenders, midfielders, and forwards on different teams - and watch the competitiveness go through the roof.

Another way to play this is as an 8 v 4, where two teams combine and play against the other. Each team has a specific goal to defend. Whichever team loses possession defends, and the other two reorganize and combine. Goals scored count for both the teams in possession.

This version is slower but brings out a ton of psychological elements.

There’s the siege mentality of having to defend a single goal with only half the numbers of your opponents, as well as the possibility that two teams might conspire to gang up against the other to reel in a lead.

Laced throughout is the constant communication required to know which teams are playing together and which goal to attack after every turnover.

Speaking of psychological elements, returning to the original 7 v 7 version - but adding a constraint that everyone must score - ratchets up the individual pressure.

Here, players can only score once, and the game doesn’t end until everyone on a team gets on the scoresheet. This won’t be an issue at the start, but when you’re the last one or two, you feel the heat - especially if the other team is smart enough to double or triple-mark you.

Game 3: Three-Team Transition

This is another one robbed from Dan Wright (seriously, if you can still find his books online, do yourself a favor and nab them).

The original

Three teams of three players and two goals with a keeper in each. Yellows attack Oranges; if they score, they get a second ball from the coach and turn and attack Blues. If Oranges win possession, they attack Blues.

This was a nice way to work on transition on both sides of the ball, and deciding the risk/reward of a given counter-attacking situation.

The remix

My biggest issue with the original was that if a team lost the ball, they became passive bystanders - not exactly the attack-to-defense transition habits you want your team to be training.

So the remix of this exercise aimed to address this, and add an element of counter-pressing and more pressure on the transition moment:

• Make the middle zone ‘safe’ - the team in possession cannot be tackled here when they are playing out from their own half

• Allow the team who has lost the ball to re-defend. If they win the ball back before it gets to the safe zone, they can attack the same end again

• 4 players per team

These changes mean you can use this game to shine a light on numerous transition moments, where it’s the intensity and risk/reward of “press after loss”, or how the team that’s just won the ball figures out their next steps, regains an outletting shape, etc.

Irrespective of who is in possession, players must constantly be evaluating whether to possess the ball and probe for an opening or take a risk and penetrate. Lots of boxes ticked on both the psychological and tactical sides.