Knowledge and understanding - Physical factorsPerformance considerations

Team strengths and weaknesses

Team strengths and weaknesses are where you take into account what capabilities you have in your team such as speed, strength, skill level and fitness. Once you have done this you can come up with a suitable approach to the match or competition.

Positive impact

A rugby team with backs players who have lots of speed will try to attack by setting up lots of phases of play. They can try and draw the opponents into rucks and mauls and then move the ball wide into more open spaces. This gives the fast backs chance to run into these spaces and create scoring opportunities.

A football team which has obvious height advantage will look to create as many set pieces as possible such as corners and free kicks. This will give them more chance to get to crosses first and direct chances towards the goal, putting much more pressure on the defending team.

Negative impact

A basketball team decide to use a fast break tactic because they have good success at lay ups, but the support players are not as quick at covering the court. This means the defending side travel back and can hassle the ball carrier and close down channels of space. This delays a pass to a lay-up scorer, meaning less chance of success.

A cricket team facing playing on a very flat and slow wicket decide to use an extra spin bowler in the bowling strategy because that player has been taking wickets recently. But as the wicket is far too flat to promote any spin, batters find it very easy to defend and then actually attack the slower ball, meaning more runs are conceded.