When should a defender actually commit to the tackle?

Russell Coates trains the cue as the attacker's head. While the head is up the attacker has vision and options, so the defender holds, delays and channels. When the vision drops to the ball, that is the moment to close. In a double up the pressing defender's job is to force that head down, and a second defender times the tackle off it.

Why does my team concede fouls when two defenders close down one attacker?

Because a one against two has become two separate one on ones. Coates trains a V shape with split roles, one defender pressing and one taking the ball, and a called word so both players know who is tackling. Danny Kerry's version of the same rule is that the goal-side defender holds up while the defender arriving from the side, who has ball access, makes the tackle.

How do we beat a press off our own free hits and 16s?

Use the calm of the restart to set your shape before you release the ball. An aggressive press wins possession on predictable triggers: the sideline pass, the backwards pass, the receiver with their back to goal and the poor reception. As Russell Coates explains on The Hockey Site, deny those cues, build a plus-one behind the ball using your goalkeeper or a dropping defender, receive on the move to win separation, and aim to reach the second zone of the pitch under control rather than just clearing your lines.

What is the difference between a pressing trap and a pressing trigger?

Russell Coates draws the distinction clearly. A trap is where defenders close off passing lanes to make the sideline look like the only option, but the trap on its own does not commit the press. The trigger is the moment you actually play the pass they wanted, such as the ball down the line, and that is when the whole press commits. The lesson for the team in possession is to stay patient when a restart feels tight, because the trap is bait, not yet a press.

Why does the second pass matter more than the first when beating a press?

As covered in Winning the second pass on The Hockey Site, the first pass only gets you out of the press, while the second pass turns that escape into real progression because defenders are still recovering and lanes are still open. If the second pass is not there, teams tend to force a risky ball, drift sideways while the press resets, or carry into a tackle. Coaching a simple forward-first decision script, backed by support in waves and a cover player behind the ball, is what turns clean exits into circle entries.

free hit Archives - The Hockey Site

Q: How do I stop my defenders diving in and giving away free hits?

Treat it as a timing and role problem rather than a technique problem. Set the minimum standard in a one on one as not being eliminated rather than winning the ball. Train the trigger as the attacker's head dropping to the ball rather than the ball itself. In a double up, agree in advance which defender presses and which one tackles. Then make the tackle visibly clean, low and from an angle, at a moment when the attacker's stick is off the ball.

How do I stop my defenders diving in and giving away free hits?

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

Russell Coates

Channel & Shave

Watch on demand

Russell Coates

How to Train Double Defending

Watch on demand

Danny Kerry

Closing and tackling in a zone defence

Watch on demand

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.

Subscribe for free

Want the full on demand library?

See all of our on-demand content in full.

Get a Coach subscription

How do we beat a press in field hockey, especially off free hits and 16s?

Quick answer. Stop feeding the press what it wants. An aggressive press wins the ball on a short list of predictable triggers: the pass to the sideline, the backwards pass, the receiver with their back to goal, and the poor reception. Off a free hit or a 16 yard hit you have a rare moment of calm to set your shape, so use it. Build a plus-one behind the ball, receive on the move so your marker never arrives on time, protect the central lane the press is trying to shut, and treat the second pass, not the first, as the one that actually breaks the press.

The coaches on The Hockey Site would be quick to add that a clean restart is rarely about the outlet pass itself. It starts a beat earlier, in what your team understands about the press it is facing, and it only really counts once the ball has travelled two passes clear of the trap.

Start by knowing what the press is hunting. On Outletting, Russell Coates makes the point that a good press is not improvised, it is built around triggers that apply to almost any system. He lists them plainly: “a pass towards the sideline, a pass with a player with his back towards goal, a backwards pass and something that’s less common but can be used is a bad reception.” Read that as your list of moments to avoid off a restart. Coates also draws a distinction most attacking teams miss, that a trap is not a trigger. The defenders shuffle across to make the sideline look like the only option, but the press only fires when you actually play the pass they wanted. The moment a free hit feels tight is the moment to be most patient, because the trap is bait, not yet a press.

Win the plus-one before you win anything else. Coates is direct that “one of the main objectives of outletting is creating a plus one situation, so that you can progress towards the midfield with a numerical overload.” Off a 16 that usually means using your goalkeeper or a dropping defender as the spare body, so that somewhere on the pitch you always have one more than the press. A restart taken quickly before that extra number is in place is a restart taken into the trap. Set the count first, then release the ball.

Run diagonals, not a flat back line. Coates prefers running diagonal lines rather than square passing across the back, and his reasoning is tactical rather than tidy: “the big reason I prefer running diagonal lines is that it means that you can play between the lines.” A square ball off a free hit invites the sideline trigger. A diagonal into a pocket between the opposition lines splits the press instead of skating around its edge, and it gives your receiver an angle to turn and face the game.

Receiving beats passing. In How to train outletting vs man to man marking, Robert Noall builds everything around dynamic receiving. You do not stand and wait for the ball to arrive off the restart, because if you do, your marker arrives with it and your first touch becomes a tackle. You move as the ball travels, you receive on the half turn, and you win a yard of separation before the ball even reaches your stick. Against a tight press the quality of that first touch matters more than the quality of the pass that follows.

Read the marking before you pick the outlet. Noall draws a clear line between man marking and man responsibility, between a defender glued to a shirt and one who defends a player while reading the game around them. Off a free hit, knowing which you face changes your solution. Against tight man marking, separation and dynamic receiving unlock the outlet. In Outletting vs zone marking, Noall stresses that a zone marks space rather than bodies, so you attack the gaps, and a ball played first time into the space between lines is worth more than a ball played to feet where a defender can close.

Refuse the sideline the press is begging you to use. From the defending side, in Training Half Court Press Coates frames a low block as a way to protect the central lane and guide the ball outside, where the pitch shrinks and help arrives fastest, and in How to Train Pressing Triggers he shows teams using the touchline as an extra defender. So keep an inside option alive off every restart rather than committing down the line as a last resort. There is a related lever worth stealing too: both Noall and Fede Tanuscio talk about attacking the defender’s weaker side, and receiving so you can turn onto the side that opens the field, not the side that walks you into traffic.

Treat the second pass as the real exit. The idea that ties the restart together sits in Winning the second pass. The first pass gets you out of the press, but the second pass is the one that turns an escape into genuine progression, because by then defenders are recovering and lanes are closing. When that pass is not there, teams default to one of three losing outcomes: forcing a risky ball, going slowly sideways while the press reorganises, or carrying into pressure and getting tackled. A simple shared script helps. If a forward pass is on, play it. If not, carry to commit a defender and ask again. If you cannot carry, play a short lateral to reopen a forward lane, and only then go back and rebuild. Support has to arrive in waves, with someone offering depth, someone offering width, and someone holding as cover, so that the brave forward pass never becomes an immediate goal against.

Play what you see, zone by zone. Fede Tanuscio gives the outlet a map in Get more circle entries from your outletting, built on a principle he keeps returning to: “Play what you see. That’s a really important principle to see what we have in front of us and what will be our decision making.” He splits the pitch into two outlet zones and measures success by reaching the second zone with the ball under control, not merely clearing your lines. Against a half court block he positions the link midfielder on the far side of the ball to leave the central channel free to be played into, a detail that turns the press’s own compactness against it.

None of this is a script to drill on repeat, and that is the point the coaches keep circling back to. Beating a press off a restart is a reading, not a pattern, and it grows by putting players in the real problem again and again, letting the trap form, getting caught a few times and finding their own way out. The masterclasses below are where those ideas are worked through in full, with the sessions to match.