The theme of this session is: In Possession. As in, when we have the ball.
The initial game is played to see allow me to assess what the players do well or don’t do so well.
The modified game has a condition that if the team in possession build the ball through the ‘wide lanes’, I will double any score they get for that possession. I want my team to play with width so I am rewarding the behaviour I want to see. I will tell them when they have the chance to get a double score.
In the next game, the condition is that I’ll double the teams score if they get the ball over half way in under ten seconds. (For younger teams, you can extend the time to 15 or 20 seconds). When we play, I want my team to get the ball forward to the opposition half as quick as possible and I am rewarding this behaviour.
Intrinsic to the games is the time they are played for and the interaction between coach and players after each game.
For example, in ‘Wide Lanes’ if I play 4 x 2 min games (with 1 min break between games), I will ask the players questions after each game to see how they understand the game. Examples might be: Why are there wide lanes in this game?? Why should we go wide with the ball?? Etc
I will always be very strict on time because otherwise, as coaches, we end up talking too much. Ask 3 or 4 questions and go back to the game.
After playing those two games, I go back to the initial game (which was an ordinary game with no conditions) and now I am looking to see if they can team the learnings from the two games and bring them back to real game. This will tell me how much they’ve learned.