The long and the short

No question you can shout from the side of a pitch and issue instructions that players will likely follow as best as possible for a quick result. But if you do that often enough, it becomes clear the voice creates the response, not what the player senses.

Yesterday I watched a team get soundly beaten because the players grasped poorly how to restart a dead ball situation. The temptation was to shout and scream. During the break, I asked the players what positions they thought the back two players should occupy on the pitch during a restart:

1 finger in the air was position A; 2 fingers in the air was position B and so on up to D.

Here are the results:

A: 2 B: 1 C: 4 D: 3

You get my point – it pays to be clear on the long and the short of what we do.