Sorry for the lack of updates. I am in Germany now, and I am a lot busier than I thought I would be, and in the down time, I have not been thinking about ultimate as much as I normally do. I have played with the team here twice, and don't have much to say except about that, other than they play a lot of force middle, which I dislike, and are still mainly indoors, which I also dislike. I am also sick, again, which has halted any extensive plans to begin to get in shape or to play as much as I would like. As I continue to settle into life here and develop a schedule, I hope to attend practices more regularly. Oh, the vocab differences are kind of fun; a disc is a Scheibe, they force links and rechts when not doing "FM" (for "force middle," not mitte as you might expect), and handlers are Aufbauers. The stall count is still in English, though.
On the topic of force middle, does this work well for anyone? I find it really hard to play defense in a man situation when the force changes from one side of the field to the other. I am probably not a good enough player, either, but still, I think the team needs to be really good about determining when, exactly, they're going to change the force from a backhand to forehand, and potentially call switches on defense. Needless to say, joining up with a group of Germans and playing pickup ultimate in the park with them for the first time means that this communication on defense was not there.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I play man defense by lining up on the correct side of my woman depending on the force. If the disc starts off being force forehand, I line up on the correct side to stop the cuts to the open side. The disc gets thrown to the other side of the field, now it's a backhand force. Suddenly, I am on the wrong side of my woman, and she has an easier open side cut. I can see force middle upsetting teams' usual open-side offense, and if I were a better defender I'm sure I would have an easier time with it. I was just always taught that the force, at a basic level, was supposed to make the other defenders' jobs easier upfield, and force middle, as I understand it, does not make it easier on the defense. I guess it makes it harder on the offense, but is it worth it?
I did a Google search on "force middle" and found a blog post from four years ago on it. The poster himself said under the "how to attack it" section: "Additionally, don’t forget that the downfield defenders are having to constantly switch which side of their man to cover. The closer the cutter is to the frisbee, the less time a defender has to make up the distance." His post talks about setting a force middle with poachers, which is more than what the team I played with was doing with their force, so I could see it working better with poachers, and, like I said, intelligent switches. But still, I don't know why force middle would be your go-to defense without poachers and a tight, communicative defense. I guess it is giving me some practice on being way more aggressive on defense. And maybe as the season goes along, I'll develop a better on-field connection with the team and defenses like this will become easier. Who knows.
See, this is why I don't write about strategy. But it's all I've got right now to talk about right now. I'm pretty much just asking for input about force middle, benefits and downsides, things I'm missing. Comment away; in the meantime, I'll try to finish some posts that have been lingering on my computer for far too long.
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4 comments:
Good to hear from you again. I agree with you on the force middle man defense. I don't like it very much.
Hilarious.
I had the same in my brief sojourn in Germany.
When I asked "well, can't we at least force one way near the endzone, so we have a *chance* at stopping a goal?" I was told that there was no point because the thrower would just 'break the mark anyway'
...
And then there is the surreal scenario when half of your team lights up a cigarette at lunch time. That was amazingly weird considering the usual smoking demographic in frisbee
Force middle as a defense isn't designed to stop open under cuts, it's designed to stop hucks. What you're essentially doing is allowing the marker to overpursue on the swing to stop the in-stride huck and not have to worry about letting off the break back to the side he just vacated.
Generally, FM allows you to poach "a little" under your man, which should theoretically allow you to make up for the poor position you receive on a switch. Better yet, if you see the disc swinging or your team calls its mark-switches early (WHICH IS KEY), you can change position and either be in the right place or trick the offensive player into making a cut that is covered by the mark.
What George said. If you can't anticipate what the next mark will be you are in trouble once that mark is set up. And yes, you are mostly guarding the cut to the disc and relying on the mark to take away the huck. Playing the 'in' cut gives you better angles for switching sides.
When I learned to play back in the day (a time shrouded in the mists of prehistory, before you were even born) FM was the D of choice, it was just what you did. Then everyone got excited about the newfangled "force flick" defense and stopped playing FM. Godiva among others revived it in the mid-90s but it's still obscure, mainly because people think it's really hard to play. However, I taught it right off the bat to the high school team I coached -- mostly beginners -- they didn't complain much because I kept them in the dark about force flick as long as possible. And it worked pretty well!
So . . . if you're used to playing no-brainer force-one-way D then sure, FM is hard until you can learn to read disc movement upfield and anticipate offensive movement. Once you can do that it's a lot more comfortable -- and you're a better defender no matter what kind of D you're playing.
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