Bear's Gridiron in Australia Forums

Now we all do the best we can and put a great deal of effort into these guys but are we potentially the reason for this.

Hawkpeter, could the rut be as a result of coaches being unable to develop these players at a club level...should there potentially be an overhaul of the way coaches train their squads and look at making the level 1 and 2 more difficult with a set criteria to focus on development and identification of talent.  I think so, i think there is alot of potential for our country to be successful on the world stage, but not within the next 5 years and not at a senior level for 10 years.

At the end of the day, it was always going to be tough for the Australian junior side to be successful when they come into camp 4 days before the game with limited preparation and unfortunately not being able to field the best side possible with depth due to monetry constraints.  The trip was an incredibly expensive trip for alot of the players to afford. But never the less, they were competitive and gave it their all, that is the Australian way.

I do not think that we as a sport in Australia are putting together a focused effort to try and get better.

There is not enough unity in our country.

Some people play for fun, some coaches coach so they can drink beer with their buddies and smoke cigarettes at practice. Other coaches take alot of pride in what they do at club level.

The thing is that we have one Division of Senior Football and One Division of Junior Football and we have to cater for all levels of committment for  players & Coaches within that division.

The Fundamental issue with this is that a High Level Coach would only get frustrated with a Football Player that only wants to turn up to practice 50% of the time and not want to get any better. (Vice Versa)

For the record a respected Gridiron Coach in QLD just retired and went to coach Rugby League and the reason he did this is because he was not getting enough "gain for his pain" as there was some days that he would turn up to coach and their would only be 6 players at Practice.

So why does a coach with so much enthusiasm leave the Sport? it is because he is  dealing with players who just want to play Hit and Giggle Football.

Any coach who trys to set standards in this country gets shot down for being too hard. It is a pity that our sport is dominated by people who just want to play the game instead of playing the sport. yet these same people want to represent their state and country and brag about how good they are.

Then there are the coaches who think that being a good coach is by blowing smoke up everyones backside and telling them how good they are when in fact they are quite mediocre at best. I am not saying that coaches have to be hard on players but Please Be Honest...

I think the first thing we need to do is run a Survey on the bear website that monitors the standard of where the players and coaches want the Level of the  sport to be played at. Then we could ascertain what level of acheivement we want to aspire to.

eg

Division 1: Practice 3 times x a week, (2 practices and 1 Film session)
Off season Strength and conditioning Program which incorporates Strength,Power,Speed, Agility and Flexibility and even some skills camps. Also have a pre season  weekend camp with two a days.

Division 2: Practice 2 times a week, (1 practices and 1 Film session)
Off season Strength and conditioning Program which incorporates Strength,Power,Speed, Agility and Flexibility and even some skills camps.

Division 3: Practice 1 time a week, during season.

We have to stop trying to just get by and set some standards with concrete plans on how to get better.

Also yes a lot of players are products of their coaches, but i don't think the Australian coaching squad was "fat and ignorant" there were a lot of good quality coaches there. Hell i think the fact it was close might have something to do with that...there seemed like an obvious disparity in terms of physical talent between the two teams.

Please explain - I was asked for a list from our rep and I gave him 6 names, and only one of them was apparently sent off to the HC for consideration. 

Rock, my figures are from 1999 so I don't know what teams now do 10 years on by we did about 150 hours of actual practice, 1 hour of film per week during the season (which I know has gone up), and for those who did weight training outside of practice, that was 1hr 2-3x a week.  Maybe crazy teams in Texas pull that kind of stuff of a billion practice hours.  Didn't happen at my school.

Regarding the committment of players I'll say this:

It is up to the coaches to get their players to practice.  A good coach will instill a love of the game in the players to the point where they WANT to turn up each and every day.  A bad coach will make players think what's the point?  Now, obviously there are extenuating circumstances (bad weather makes everyone stay home), but by and large attendance at training is a reflection on the coach, rather than the players.

Further the coach has to be able to tell his players they won't play if they don't train.  It's really that simple.  The dedicated ones will show up while the part timers will gradually fall off.  Most often, those part timers are doing more harm than good to a program anyways, so it's best to cut the dead weight.  Tough but fair is the only way to deal with the situation, IMO. 

Now as for rep football:

Clearly, we all agree that the challenge of getting a team together to play well with a limited playbook is exceedingly difficult.  Therefore, I suggest the solution to be to nominate players a full year in advance of the tournament.  That will allow for two things:  Allow them time to get funds together AND allow for a few practices before the actual game.  While other players may make their way into the league later on, choosing the roster a year in advance gives people plenty of time to prepare.  The team can run a mini-camp over school holidays a few times a year to build the playbook and skills up.  It's not the ideal situation, but it has to be better than what's currently in place.

One other issue we have to contend with is players playing other sport.  The dedication to being fit and active is there but the dedication to this sport is not because the sports these players (im looking at the junior level) have grown up with take precedent over everything else.  The nature of our game means that juniors can only start playing American football at 13-14years old. By that stage in what ever sport they are playing rep teams become a big part of their sporting career and so the transition to another sport to take it seriously becomes alot more difficult.  Every kid that i have coached over the years loves our sport once they are involved and making state sides, but they arent ready to dedicate themselves because they still have park footy on the Sunday.

I still believe an overhaul is required on the coaching techniques and practices however i also feel that we need to look at expanding our game.  I am aware that there are people out there who go out to schools and teach Flag football and basic level 0 training which is exactly what this sport needs. But as leagues we should maybe consider starting up flag football competitions from 8 year olds onwards.  It would be tough in the beginning not having any funding for marketing but this is probably the best way to build our sport up, my goal for this would be to make American football the primary sports focus rather than the secondary.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh7CY9kdPbY

As much as I hate to kick a team while it's down, few things crossed my mind:

1.  That's pretty awful tackling by a team that's theoretically supposed to be made up of our finest junior players.  Shouldn't these guys be at least 3 year vets?  If so, shouldn't they be better than this?

2.  The AUS offense appeared to be running a triple option attack - If this was the case, I'm curious to know the logic behind running an offense that requires lots of practice and discipline when there was only apparently 4 days to prepare.

3.  Curious play calling on the goal line in that first fumble situation.  Apparently Australia had good field position all day but couldn't punch it in more than once.

I hate to be an armchair QB with only 3 minutes of game footage, and again it sounds like sour grapes, but with eveyone here posting things about the selection process and training etc - it seems to me that the Australian team maybe got outcoached?  Can people associated with the nationals team verify/explain exactly what happened?