Happy Friday!  I hope you’re gearing up for a great hockey weekend, getting started with this week’s Playbook.

Despite being an Englishman and born into an intense sporting rivalry with Australia I’ve always deeply admired their style of hockey and I’m invariably excited to watch them in competitive play. Understanding some of the principles behind (especially) their attacking play is always educational for me.

So it was fun yesterday to watch their Men’s team’s latest match in the FIH Pro League vs Germany.  They won in convincing fashion, 3-0, with all goals from penalty corners.  But what stood out to me was the variety of different ways they created space in attacking sequences.  This is what I want to dive into today, there is a lot for us to learn!

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High Possession Structure vs Zonal Block

Australia dominated the ball in the first quarter often pushing Germany back into what looked like mostly a narrow 3-3-3-1 zonal block.  This plan from Germany aims to clog up the centre of the field and force Australia to progress the ball down the wings where Germany can then close them down into the sideline.

This is a pretty common defensive strategy at many levels of the game and so it’s interesting to see how Australia looked to overcome it.

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#1 - Extreme Depth

If the opposition are going to limit space horizontally and fill the central areas of the field with players then it is vitally important that your forwards stretch their structure vertically as much as possible.

The picture below shows their formation in the build up to the first goal.  

The players circled show us how deep the Australian structure is pulling German defenders, right to the baseline and this has a large impact on the build up phase.  Midfielders are able to come back to the ball and find pockets of space to create.

We see here the run towards the ball (another very important concept for teams looking to break down a tight zonal block) and the receiver has a lot of space to turn and attack the circle.  This passage of play ends with a circle entry, drawing a penalty corner which is converted for Australia to lead 1-0.  But we can see that the depth in structure is what creates the conditions for this to happen.  These pockets of space could not be this big without that.

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#2 - Set Piece Creativity

The camera shot below shows a very interesting approach to a left sideline free hit, near the circle.

It’s not about what we see here, it’s what we don’t see!  Looking into the circle we see NO AUSTRALIAN ATTACKERS!  Where are they?

A very modern and tactically sound approach to this kind of set piece (and one I have advocated for in earlier editions of this newsletter) would be to have a forward in front of the GK, and then another two between the goal and the ball at different depths in the circle.   We see none of that here.

The camera shot below answers the question of where they all are?

All the attackers were holding position outside the edge of the circle with two supporting the ball carrier.   What this does is empty the circle of not just the attackers but the defenders as well, leaving a huge space in front of the goal, exactly where attacking teams want space to exist.

Now the German defenders have to try and win the ball while retreating backwards towards their own goal rather than attacking forwards towards the ball and this is a different challenge they are likely not used to.  This is enough to draw a mistake, which leads to another penalty corner and a 2-0 scoreline.

The penalty corners that result in both these instances set up the win for Australia and it’s easy to focus on those routines (which were great on their own right) as the turning points in this game.  Obviously they had an impact - but the conditions and space the team created with their structure and positioning to win the corners in the first place were in my opinion, just as important.  

These concepts we can learn from and can be implemented at all levels, no world class skills needed!