Quick answer. Diving in is a timing and role problem far more often than a technique problem. Lower the standard first: in a one on one, the minimum is not to be eliminated, not to win the ball. Give the defender a trigger they can actually see, which is the attacker’s head dropping to the ball rather than the ball itself. In any double up, decide before it happens which defender presses and which one tackles, because two players both going for it is what produces the gap and the whistle. Then make the tackle visibly clean, low, from an angle, at a moment when the attacker’s stick is off the ball, because umpires punish what looks like a stick tackle whether or not it was one.
That is the short version. Here is why the coaches on The Hockey Site would tell you the free hit is usually decided several seconds before the tackle happens.
Lower the standard before you raise it. In How to Train Double Defending, Russell Coates sets the minimum result of a one on one as a draw. In his words, “the minimal thing you go for is to draw the one versus one. So make sure you’re not eliminated.” That sounds modest until you watch what changes. A defender told to win the ball reaches for it. A defender told not to get beaten stays on their feet, keeps their distance and waits. Most of the free hits you are giving away are being conceded by players trying to be heroes on a ball they were never going to get.
Give them a trigger they can see. Coates trains the timing cue as the attacker’s head. When the head is up, the attacker has options and vision, so the defender holds. When the vision drops to the ball, that is the moment to close. In a double up he splits the roles around exactly this: “you’ve got one defender whose main task is to press the attacker and make sure his head is looking down at the pitch. And then you’ve got one defender who’s actually going to make the tackle who has to focus on timing.” The presser is explicitly not trying to win the ball. Their job is to make the attacker look down.
Decide who tackles before the moment arrives. This is the part most club sides never spell out, and it is where the gap comes from. In Closing and tackling in a zone defence, Danny Kerry makes it a rule: the goal-side defender holds up, and the defender arriving from the side, the one with ball access, is the one who tackles. Coates gets to the same place through language, having the pressing defender call “you” to the tackling defender. Agree the word as a team. Without it, both players hesitate, or both commit, and the attacker walks between them.
A one against two is not two one on ones. Coates is blunt about the difference. “The chance of winning the ball back in a 1 versus 2 is a lot higher than in a 1 versus 1,” he says, then immediately adds the caveat that you have to make sure it actually is a one against two rather than a double one on one. The shape he trains is a V, one defender pressing and one positioned to take the ball, rather than two defenders squaring up side by side. He names the failure pattern himself: “Both defenders diving in, no clear communication, and the free man is actually arriving a bit too late.”
Channel, rather than sit in front of the goal. In Channel & Shave, Coates argues against defenders holding a line straight back to the goal. Match the attacker’s pace instead, force them wide, protect the left foot and take away the inside pass. A defender who is channelling is doing something useful on every step, which means they are not standing still waiting for a moment that will tempt them into a lunge.
Coach modes, not instructions. Kerry works with four defensive modes, deny, dictate, disrupt and dispossess, and treats them as principles rather than commands. “I use principles to help athletes make good decisions under pressure, and in the moment,” he says. “Rather than telling them, you know, do this, do that, it’s more around, how do they apply a particular principle under pressure.” He expects a defender to know which mode they are in and to move between them several times inside one phase. Dispossess is one of four, and it is the one that should be reached for least.
Half the free hit is what it looks like. Coates raises something coaches rarely train for: umpires often read a clean shave tackle as a stick tackle. His answer is not to avoid the tackle but to make it obviously clean. Pick the moment when the attacker’s stick is off the ball, keep defensive speed up rather than reaching from a standstill, and approach from an angle that does not invite the whistle. On the shave itself he uses a V grip and a lunge, left foot for the backhand and right foot for the forehand, which keeps the defender low and mobile and leaves them able to counter rather than sprawled on the turf.
Patience is a coachable habit. “Just because we’ve practiced winning the ball does not mean every moment is the right moment for the shave,” Coates says. “Patience beats feisty every day.” He points out that feisty defending works at lower levels and stops working as the standard rises, which is worth saying out loud to a player who has been getting away with it.
Some of it is physical, not tactical. Kerry is direct about this. “There’s also a real huge amount of physical ability to be able to decelerate, get low into that position, and get out of that position.” A player who cannot decelerate has no choice but to arrive at speed and commit. If your defenders keep diving in, some of that may be a deceleration problem wearing a decision-making costume.
Make the cost of a lunge immediate. Coates uses a constraint in training that does the coaching for you: a defender who gets eliminated leaves the pitch for thirty seconds. Suddenly the speculative dive has a price the player feels in the session rather than in a report afterwards. He builds the technique through controlled one on ones at walking pace first, then adds speed, then the Indian dribble and 3D, so the tackle is learned before it is pressured.
None of this is a checklist to read out at training. What these coaches give you is a way of seeing the moment, so that when a defender lunges you can work out whether it was the read, the role, the patience or the legs that broke. Watch the sessions in full, take the parts that fit your players, and let them work it out with you.
Go more in depth here
Read next: Deny, dictate, disrupt, dispossess, Pros and Cons of Zonal, Man-to-Man and Mixed Defense Systems.
More coaching questions: How do I coach the hit so players get power without lifting or fouling?, How do I teach the Indian dribble properly in field hockey?, My players are fit but slow to turn. How do I train change of direction?, How do I coach players who can’t beat a defender one on one?. All of them are in Field Hockey Coaching Questions.
The experts mentioned in this article
Russell CoatesCoach in The Netherlands. Founder of Hockey Platform.
Danny KerryFormer head coach for Team GB men and women.
Join us for more on this
Free coaching ideas from the world’s best, straight to your inbox.
