The previous day had been a long one, with practice, a game and then film review for all the players. We had ammeneded our plan in the evening of day 2 and let the players know. As for all best laid plans it changed when we woke up because it was raining very heavily.
This meant we had to amend our schedule in the hope that the weather would clear up or at least improve. This was done at breakfast by Coach Anderson and as you can see from the picture below the schedule was amended accordingly.
After a quick breakfast the coaches started to breakdown the film of Finland. Watching the film there was definitely areas were I knew we could get after Finland on Special Teams and for the most part I thought our units were stronger across the board. The one area where I thought we could get after Finland was against their shield punt formation. I had some ideas on how I could do this but I’m in a fortunate position that one of my friends and fellow London Blitz coaches Aston Ellington has had a lot of special teams experience so I reached out to him and we had a conversation.
I tools his suggestions on board and carded my solution. In the 9am special teams meeting we reviewed film of Finland’s punt formations and drew the scheme on the white board so that the players could see it and they also had a chance to ask questions.
When we got the field for practice, it was still raining and despite the elements the players picked it up really well and ran it like we had practiced it a lot!
The rest of the day went much like you can see on the schedule. I will add that when I had my special teams meeting we reviewed each of special teams for Finland and high lighted in the areas were we could get after them. My last point to them before I ended my meeting was that I was proud of them and how they carried themselves and I wanted them to play with the freedom and confidence that they showed in practice.
At this point there was nothing else to do other than wait for the game the next day.
Ramblings of an American Football Fan 