Saturday 7 June 2014

Korea's Lee: a lesson in decision making

Whilst South Korea's Myung-Ho Lee has had some cracking games with some breathtaking saves, he has otherwise actually been his own worst enemy at times. There is a lot that can be learned from watching his mistakes and processing them, to help work out your own "rule of thumb" concerning what to do when faced with your own decision making during games. At the highest levels of hockey, even the slightest mistake can look huge, and it is this added pressure of the fear of making the wrong decision that can lead to such mistakes and goals conceded in the first place.

Against Holland, with the score low, he made the unnecessary to make a rash diving challenge to try and dispossess the Dutch ball carrier closing in on goal. In this situation, he needed to rely on his defence more. Once off the line, he was going to be vulnerable to an open goal, and with so many defenders waiting to counter the attack, he would have been better off letting them do so. If the ball carrier was on the baseline and his defenders had decided not to move in, then he would have been good to go. However, this was not the case, and led to an unnecessary goal that really effected the end result.

This is what they call when the goalkeeper is "forcing the play". Wanting to face that shot to allay fears or out of boredom, the goalkeeper can get over aggressive and come out when they don't even need to, leading to goals. Here, the goalkeeper is better off trusting in their defenders and letting them do the work, rather than trying to do the work of the defence and goalkeeper. I myself have been guilty of doing it as a 19 year old involved in top tier training sessions, but at this age and level of experience, is not something you'd expect Lee to be doing. Coaches don't want to see it and neither do team mates, so for the sake of everyone best to react to the play than force the opponent's hand!

His other goal was more embarrassing than anything though. The configuration of the inner curve on Obo's pads can make it more difficult to 'snap the legs shut' and Lee struggled with positioning and weight issues as he got off balance. I think a lot of goalkeepers would have this problem, and can only be countered by smartly reading the game incredibly quickly and shifting the appropriate leg to push out to block save to stop the open space between the legs for a goal.



No comments:

Post a Comment