Offer a measure of realism in kick chasing situations where defenders are often accused of taking a cheap shot when blocking. The kicker will be challenged to be accurate while chasers need to work on downing defenders as a unit to gather the ball or challenge opposition catchers. These should be your last orders as Teachers...

Warm up time: 5-7
Session time: 8-10
Development time: 10-15
Game time: 15-20
Warm down time: 5-8

What to think about

What makes this slightly different from a normal kick chase exercise is the introduction of “nuisance” defenders in front of the chasers. You should brief them to nudge the players who go past them or run in front of them to make the chase that more difficult. Whether we like it or not, this is a very likely scenario in a match.

set-up

1. Chasers: Beat the defenders in front of you before concentrating on the kick.
2. Work together to win the ball, either by challenging in the air for it and then offloading OR by reducing the time and space for the opposition to run back.

What you get your players to do

Put a kicker and two chasers at one end of a 20m x 15m box. Put a defender in front of the two chasers (see picture 1, fig 1). Get the kicker to aim into the target area - preferably with a kick that can be caught – and it must travel at least 10m. The two chasers have to retrieve the ball cleanly, while the defender can disrupt the runs of the chasers before trying to chase down the ball carrier (see picture 1, fig 2).