We get into the circle plenty but hardly score. What should I be coaching?

Quick answer. Usually the problem is not the finish itself. It is what happens between entering the circle and the shot: too few attackers in front of goal, players running across the goal instead of standing still and timing a short move, low-value shots taken in a hurry, and nobody following the ball in for the rebound. Coaches fix it by drilling finishes in the zones your team actually shoots from, rewarding rebounds and better passes as well as goals, and training against more defenders than attackers, because that is what the circle looks like in a game.

That is the short version. Here is how the coaches on The Hockey Site actually look at it.

It usually goes wrong before the shot

Alyson Annan breaks scoring into three steps in Circle behaviour: “get into the circle, getting into a position to shoot, and getting a shot away.” Her experience is that “more often than not, it goes wrong by the first point in getting to the circle.” She also dealt with exactly the problem in this question, at international level. With the Dutch women before Rio, she says, “we were entering the circle, you know, 30 times a game, but we were getting maybe 10% of shots away, relying a lot on the corner.” Her fix was not more entries: “We wanted to increase the outcome.”

So before you book an extra shooting session, watch what your attackers do in the moments after the ball crosses into the circle.

Get people in front of goal, then stand still

Annan’s first rule is simple: “Once you’re in the circle, stay in the circle as an attacker. Reposition yourself somewhere else in the circle if you feel the need to move, but stay in the circle.” Her second runs against what most players do. They keep moving, and a moving circle gets crowded: “if everyone stands still, there’s a lot of space”. Standing still does not mean waiting. She wants players balanced and facing goal, then a short, explosive move to get in front, timed to the moment the passer is ready, rather than long runs across the goal and back.

Fede Tanuscio, in Circle priorities, gives strikers three priorities that fit in a team talk: “first one open the D. Second one is battle first post and the third one, it’s far post.” Michael McCann, in 9 yard scoring, describes the post player’s checklist: “there’s traffic, I’m going to stay. I set far enough away from the post. I can always go to the ball instead of having to go away from the goal if I have to.” Santi Freixa adds the habit underneath all of it: know where the goal and the keeper are before you get there.

Check which shots you are taking

Simon Blanford looked at every shot in an Olympic women’s tournament for Beyond Shot Count, and the uncomfortable finding was that “the majority of shots players take are unlikely to score.” Worse, a low-value shot rarely leads anywhere: “it’s both unlikely score and, to borrow an American phrase, is one and done.” The alternative is not always obvious to players: “They can choose not to shoot, but to attempt to get the ball into a better scoring area.” Or try to win a penalty corner. He has watched plenty of club sessions and says “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the teams actually practicing winning a corner.”

This is a choice, not a law. Blanford leaves it to each coach, and he adds a caveat that matters at club level: “If you know your conversion rates of your corners and they’re not very good, then obviously that makes shooting that much more important.” Annan wants her teams scoring field goals rather than relying on corners. What both agree on is that a hurried, low-percentage shot is not automatically better than keeping the ball.

Rebounds are where the cheap goals are

McCann’s squads work to a rule: “No spectators or ball watchers. Yeah. You never stop until the ball’s in the net, which means every exercise we do at training, the ball you you never go for a new ball until the ball goes outside the circle.” He sells the unglamorous run to his players as a numbers game: get there twice as often and you score twice as often, which is “better than the guys that don’t get there at all and score nothing.”

The technique of the rebounder is about attention, not speed. McCann: “we need to turn a second or two before the goal shot. And we have our concentration on the area where the ball’s going to go.” Jude Menezes interviewed strikers across three generations for Rebound scoring, and the common thread was expectation: “just watch the ball, anticipate and expect it to come to you even before you enter the circle.” Annan’s version for the player without the ball is “keep your balance, stand still, and face the goal.”

Composure is trained, not told

Annan sees players rush finishes that did not need rushing: “You don’t have to shoot quickly. You shoot when you’re ready to shoot.” Freixa, asked about players who panic in front of goal, puts it back on the training: “In a training, it’s like putting the conditions that you will face in the match. So you have to ask to the player, where comes the panic?” Repetition in those conditions is what builds it: “When you [train] and when you repeat it, the confidence of… scoring will increase.”

How you react to misses matters too. Tanuscio judges the decision rather than the result: “I judge intentions, no actions.” If the intention was right, it was a good action, and on to the next one. And for young players short on bravery, Annan’s reassurance is worth passing on: “there’s never a perfect position to shoot from. So we shouldn’t be training the perfect shot.”

Train finishing where your goals actually come from

This is the change that made the difference for Annan’s Dutch team: “the areas of the circle that we would we were shooting from were pretty good, but we weren’t training in those zones. So we were doing all these drills that were out of those zones. So we changed to doing drills that end that finished in those zones”. She also widens what counts as success in a circle drill: “Rebounding. It’s a second shot at goal. We should celebrate that. A pass to someone in the circle who’s in a better position can also be an option.”

Then make it look like a game. McCann starts technical, then principles, then builds up “one against one contest or two against two contests or three against three contests” inside the circle. Menezes runs rebound games with “two to three phases”, because it “forces people to move into the circle, to reposition to, to check where the defender is”. Moabi Malebye, looking at the circle entries that produced something at the 2021 men’s Euros, found most came with the attack outnumbered, and asks every coach the same question: “Is my training [regimen] reflecting the data, right?” If your finishing drills are three attackers against a keeper, they are not.

So, before your next session, the useful question is not “how do I make my forwards better finishers”. It is “what do my attackers do between entering the circle and the shot”. Count the attackers in front of goal, watch who follows the ball in, and move your shooting drills into the spots your team actually shoots from, with a defender or two more than feels fair.

Two questions this usually raises

Should my strikers keep moving in the circle?

Alyson Annan says mostly no. A circle full of moving players gets crowded, while players standing still leave space. She wants attackers balanced, facing goal, then making one short, explosive move to get in front when the passer is ready, rather than running across the goal and back. And once they are in the circle, they stay in it.

Should we shoot or try to win a penalty corner?

It is a choice each coach makes. Simon Blanford’s data from an Olympic women’s tournament shows most shots are low value and rarely lead to a second chance, so he argues for working the ball or winning a corner instead. But if your own corner conversion is poor, he says, shooting matters more. Alyson Annan prefers teams that score from open play.

The sessions below are where these coaches go into the working detail. Every masterclass opens free so you can see what it covers; the full session sits in the Coach subscription.