Water polo tactical board: drawing the press, the drop, a man-up and the drive

On a water polo board almost everything happens inside six metres, and most of it within two metres of the goal. That is where the centre fights for position, where the defence decides whether to press or to drop, and where a man-up either finds the free shooter or does not.

Why water polo needs a board

In water, explaining costs more than anywhere else. Every stop cools the squad and spends a slot somebody else is waiting for, which is why the situations are best shown at the poolside before anybody gets in. How a session is fitted around that is covered in the water polo training session plan; this page is about what goes on the board.

And the board has to be a water polo board. Positions are read against the pool’s own lines, and a set drawn on the wrong field reads wrong, because the distances are not the same and the places do not mean the same thing.

The pool you draw on

Four markings carry nearly all of the meaning, and every diagram below shows them:

The two-metre line, red. An attacker may not be inside it ahead of the ball, which is why the centre and the wings set up on it rather than past it.
The five-metre mark, red, at the side of the pool: the penalty.
The six-metre line, yellow. A player fouled outside it may shoot straight from the free throw, so it is the line that decides whether a foul costs the defence a shot.
The half-distance line, white, where the ball goes in for the sprint that starts each period.

The players are caps, as in the water: white for the attack here, blue for the defence, and the goalkeeper in red with a number one. Only the centre is marked, with a C.

The attack: three and three

The usual set is a 3-3. Three players on the two-metre line — the two wings a little outside the posts and the centre in front of the goal — and three outside: two flats and the point at the top. The centre is the one the rest of the attack is built around, and most of what a defence does is an answer to where the centre is.

Against the press

The press: every defender between their player and the goal. White: attack, C the centre. Blue: defence. Red: goalkeeper.

In a press every defender takes a player and stays between that player and the goal. It makes every pass hard and every shot contested, and it costs legs: it has to be swum for the whole possession. Its weak point is the centre, who is marked one against one right in front of the goal, where a single lost battle for position is an exclusion or a goal.

Against the drop

The drop: the defenders from the flats and the point sink back onto the centre.

The answer to a strong centre is to take the space away from them. The defenders from the flats and the point sink back towards the centre and close the ball off from the two-metre line. What they leave is the shot from outside six metres. That trade is the whole decision — whether the shooters outside are more dangerous than the centre inside — and on a board it can be looked at before it has to be made in the water.

A player up

Six on five: two on the posts at two metres, four across outside. Five defenders in a zone.

An exclusion leaves one team a player short for twenty seconds, or until a goal or a change of possession, and those seconds decide a large share of matches. The attack most often sets up as a 4-2: two players on the posts at the two-metre line and four across outside. The defence, with five, cannot mark everybody, so it plays a zone and chooses whom to leave.

This is the situation most worth having drawn. The movements are short, exactly defined and repeated every match, and the difference between a man-up that scores and one that does not is usually a single pass arriving a moment too late — which is a thing a board can show and a shout from the side cannot.

The drive

A drive: the flat swims past their defender towards the goal and the point passes into the space. Dark: movement. Yellow, dashed: the pass.

A player outside swims past their defender towards the goal and receives. Drawn still, it is one arrow and one pass. Played, it works only if the pass leaves as the defender is beaten rather than after — a second later and the defender has recovered, or the centre’s defender has come across. That timing is the play.

The counterattack

A save, a steal or a missed shot, and the team that swims first has a player free before the defence is back. The counter is decided in the first strokes after the ball changes hands: who goes, who stays to cover, and where the pass goes. All of it is a sequence, and a sequence is where drawing on paper stops being enough.

Still or animated

A still drawing shows where everybody should be. An animated one shows when — the drive starting, the pass leaving, the defence shifting across in a man-down. In water polo that is most of the play, which is why a board that moves is worth more here than in most sports. How that works, and when arrows on a still picture are enough, is covered in animated drills.

From the board to the session

On most tactical boards the drawing is where the work ends: an image, saved somewhere. In Ultimate Coach it is where the work starts. The set you drew becomes a drill, the drill goes into a training session plan, and the session goes into the calendar and out to the squad, who can watch the movement on their phones before they are in the water — which is exactly where time spent explaining is the most expensive.