Mastering the tackle - get the feet right

A senior club coach has a defensive problem: "We are conceding far too many scores. Our backs seem to be sluggish, giving their men an awful lot of room and to compound this, we are ineffective in the tackle. Any ideas?"

Your problem is two-fold. First, the footwork of the backs is not up to scratch and they also need to be drilled in how to tackle properly.

We put your problems to highly-rated Monaghan half-back Dermot McArdle, also an up-and-coming coach, responsible for the innovative website gaelicperformance.com.

He says; "If you watch players closely, you will see the top defenders are the ones who can move their feet and therefore their bodies the quickest. The best defender in the country is Marc O Se. His ability to accelerate and decelerate quickly is a sign of a great athlete. But it is not just quick feet that makes him a top defender, it's the fact that he rarely buys the dummies that the best forwards spend hours perfecting - he defends smartly."

The secret to this, says Dermot, starts with watching the attacker's hips.

"Only react when the hips move. Also, you have to stay the correct distance from the attacker - close enough to block or get a tackle but far enough so that they can't skip past you."

Timing the tackle is all-important. "Big hits are such a rarity now, simply because players are so quick, they can avoid them," says Dermot.

"When a player is in possession they have four steps - really five or six - before they must play the ball. By counting these steps, you can better time your tackles. While tackling you should try to slow the attacker down first and then attempt to dispossess using quick hands, tackling up and down on the ball and hands. Don't try to wrestle the ball and always show the ref you are not leaving the hand in or pulling a jersey".

Dermot recommends the "mirror drill" as an excellent exercise for getting players to react to other players' movements.

"Set up two opposite squares - one for the attackers, one for your defenders. For 30 seconds, the attackers can move anywhere inside their square, while the defenders must simply mirror this movement in their square. So if the attacker is at A, the defender is at A, and if the attacker is at B, the defender is at B, and so on.

Questions to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Comments (0) »

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment