Kicking needs to be worked on throughout all levels of Junior Footy. After watching some local senior footy on the weekend I was again surprised to see so many adults kicking with bad technique. The main problems I saw were;
– Two hand ball drop
– High Ball Drop
– Tossing the ball up slightly to kick
– Kicking across the line of the ball
– Ball not spinning properly
These issues can all be fixed throughout the junior development stage, and as coaches one of your goals should be to leave players with better skills than what they can into to the year with.
Main things to Work on.
The biggest thing we need to work on with our players in the ball drop. The ball drop accounts for most players ability to be a good kick or not. The ball drop is made up of
– The grip
– Alignment
– Ball drop height
– Ball drop position
Holding the ball correctly is important as it assists in getting the rest of the kick right. Players want to make sure they hold the ball with their hands on the outside of the ball. Then you want to tell your players to point the end of the ball to the ground (a lot of players will point it to where they want to kick it).
From there, you want to try and align the ball predominantly on their preferred kcik side, trying to avoid swaying from left to right.
Then we want the ball drop to be below the players hips, with their fingers pointing to the ground. The opposite arm then goes out to the side to assist in balancing. Getting your players to really understand the ball drop with significantly help their kicking.
How to add technique work into a session.
During the warm-up phase of the session you can add some simple kicking (2 players one ball) to ensure plenty of volume. You can then go around to every player and asses their kick. Get players to try and hit a particular goal of kicking and marking 10 in a row, or count how many kicks they have had.
Additionally, before the session starts, players must do 100 kicks to themselves on each footy before training starts.
Throughout the training session, you can separate the group into smaller groups, and have one of those be a technique group. Remember, this is not limited to really young players, as a lot of players even up to the age of colts need to work on kicking technique.
Suggested Activities.
Again, there are plenty more on the website. Simply tick kicking in the search options and go from there.
