WARRNAMBOOL is hoping the phrase ‘bad kicking is bad football’ won’t apply to it next season.
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Second-year coach Matt O’Brien said the Blues’ pre-season plan had a strong skill component he hopes will help them build on their 2018 Hampden league elimination final finish.
“We’ve had a really high emphasis on kicking with a different variety of kicks – longer to position and the smaller chip kick and also leading more towards the ball,” he said.
“Skill and fitness, you’ve just got to keep improving them all along but we really have focussed more on kicking as an independent skill as opposed to having it integrated into contested or structural work.
“We’ve isolated kicking and spent 15 to 20 minutes (each session) purely on kicking skills.”
O’Brien, who recently returned from a three-week holiday in Sri Lanka, said game-day situations would test the Blues’ theory.
“You can see improvement in the drills we’re doing but whether that transfers under fatigue and pressure, the matches will tell us that,” he said.
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