How games can be lost in youth Australian rules football

As a long-time coach of youth footballers in Australian rules football working with players aged under seven to under sixteen on the Queensland State Schoolboys team at the Australian National Championships, I wanted to share with emerging coaches some of the reasons why some of my teams lost games that maybe they should have won. Sometimes it was a mistake I made in planning, while other times a player may have failed to follow team rules.

In three Australian Championship matches against Western Australia, my Queensland schoolboy team was performing well and in a position to win the match when the players made mistakes that encouraged Western Australia to improve their game after scoring two or three easy goals. with our simple goal. preventable mistakes. In Tasmania, in 1967, we played them in our first game. On two occasions the referee awarded a mark to one of their forwards who appeared to have been touched by our defender playing up front. Our defender stopped and appealed to the referee to no avail. Meanwhile, the striker continues to play and scores a goal. The same player did not learn from his first mistake of not blowing the whistle and allowed it to happen a second time shortly after.

In Darwin, our center half broke our team’s rules during the second quarter when we had the game under control. The team that broke twice rule involved a defensive strategy. If a defender had the ball but did not have a free goal, he was to kick the ball to the wing of the stands on the defensive side of the field. Instead, he kicked the ball into a midfield contest that allowed an opponent to pounce on the ball and hand it to a teammate who scored easily. We lost the game then and not in the last minutes of the game when both the goal and field referees made two blunders that allowed a point to be awarded when our fullback had clearly marked the ball in front of the goal line. He kept playing and we had the football beyond the band clear to put the game out of any doubt. Remembering it cost us a goal and the game. But if that simple team rule had been obeyed, the sandgropers would not have returned to the game.

In 1970 at Chelmer Reserve in Brisbane, in the last five minutes of the game, the Western Australia captain was allowed to swing wide into the front pocket unchallenged to take a mark at the boundary line. He kicks a great goal from fifty meters. His opponent didn’t realize his talent and allowed him to do two more times to create a win for his team. A runner, one of our players, came out to deliver the message after the first goal. But he didn’t convey the seriousness of the situation to that defending player.

Back in Darwin, when we played Victoria, we had a chance to win in three-quarter time, but the Victorians finished strong when we carelessly gave away six free kicks in a row. These free kicks led to several Victorian goals. This meant we had no chance to score as we couldn’t hold or get the ball.

In 1968, in Collingwood, we played Victoria. In this game that came to half time we were winning and playing well. Then one of the best players on the wing in the space of a few minutes had marked the ball twice ready to kick the ball to our striker only to kick the ball to the man on the mark. This resulted in the Victorians kicking off two easy goals and winning by a much smaller margin than in previous years.

Let me now watch an under-10 match that I officiated in 1980. It was a preliminary final. The reason we lost was my mistake. With high school players, they will accept the reasons why you move them to try to win a game. This is not so with children under ten. At three quarters, I moved one of my midfielders forward on the wing as an attack and defense strategy. He had been one of our best players up to that point. He dropped his bundle and his opponent went on a rampage. To make matters worse for our supporters, he marked a football in the back of a pack, he played only to have it nullified with a free kick awarded to an opponent. Yes, the referee had made a mistake. That happen. But the biggest mistake I made.

The last one I will mention was with a regional team I coached at the Queensland State Junior High School Championships. He had two tall, talented players who could play center forward and dominate. One was a left footer. So I put him right half forward hoping that when he got the ball he would turn to his left foot and swing towards the goals and kick some. However, what happened was that they just got in each other’s way. So our attack kept failing. Unfortunately, I persisted with the tactic hoping it would work. But he didn’t. (As an aside, the other player was a relative unknown to me since his school played in a different competition than mine. He made the state team and then was drafted by Collingwood, where he became a top-tier player.) That was one of the dangers associated with regional teams because you have so little time to get to know the players.

These are just a few significant mistakes I made early in my coaching career. There were many others, I’m sure. What you need to do as a developing coach is go through each game by watching and noting the successes and failures, keeping a record of each one and reviewing your notes from time to time.