From the FA’s “England DNA: Playing your part” conference, I will be taking the focus on “social” skills, from their 4 Corners model.
In particular, I shall be encouraging my players to take five minutes before a game or practice to work together to devise field settings and strategies. If they don’t talk off the field, what chance is there that they will when they get on the field?
I spent last Sunday with a group of football coaches from the FA East region, finding out about the FA’s new initiative, “England’s DNA”.
With presentations and coaching demonstrations on “who we are”, “the future player”, “how we coach”, “how we play” and “how we support”, the day offered both theoretical and practical guidance as to how the FA expects its coaches to develop the Future Player – from grassroots to the international stage.
For all the fanfare around the “DNA”, perhaps most revealing was the statement, in an introductory video, that there was, in fact, no fixed model – as soon as a document is written, it goes out of date (or evolves, to maintain the biological metaphor).
What was offered was a framework, beyond the “4 corners” (see below) for the philosophical grounding of football coaching.
It sounds quite high-powered – in fact, it was practical and realistic, and there are definitely lessons to be learnt.
David Hinchliffe has just re-posted an article on bowling actions (http://www.pitchvision.com/which-action-is-best-for-pace-bowling) which features a short clip of Fred Trueman in action.
I don’t think I have ever properly watched FST bowling, but as David writes, this is the classic model for the side-on action:
But what happens next surprised me.
Fred does not use the “pre-turn” pivot on the back foot, as described by Ian Pont and Steffan Jones, to allow the back foot and knee to point towards the target, to allow the drop-step and block.
Instead he drags through his back foot and pivots at the same time, so that when his front foot lands (quite probably a foot or more over the batting crease – perfectly legal, until 1962) his legs and lower body are perfectly aligned to execute the drop-step.
OK – not a perfectly braced front leg, but otherwise this looks like a pretty effective transition from tp1 to tp2, to me, with the bowling arm delayed.
Did we lose something when the front-foot no ball law was introduced, and fast bowlers stopped dragging?
The Teesra 