ROTATING A TEAM OF 9

rebeccaCoach, New Zealand

i have a team of nine and rotate as follows gk gs ga wa 1st half wa 2nd half c wd 1st half wd 2nd half gd everyone plays and knows 4 players will have a half a game each week but a full game the following. Its is confusing but works

Alison Skelhorn (7)Coach, Australia

I rotate two players every quarter however I nominate a girl for captain each week who does not go off at all. You need to work out your strong team players and not have them all off at the same time. The only down side to this type of rotation is that it does not allow a good consolidation some times for a player for a set position. But I have found it to be a fair system for court time for the players.Also the players who were off in the last quarter are not off first quarter next game. Use a spreadsheet and it is easy to keep track of.

Netball CoachCoach

I agree with Alison. With nine players, 1 girl gets a full game and the other 8 will each have 1 quarter off. I keep a record of who has had time off. The two I have off is generally one "good" player and one "developing" player ( a C/WA/WD and the other GS/GK/GA/GD. This way most girls feel like they have had a match playing 75%. I dont like half matches because I see some players taking time to warm up.....

Narelle BrownCoach, Australia

Our club has a policy that everyone must have equal court time during the season (it's coach's call during semis) so a different "captain" each week playing whole game and 2 different players off each quarter is the standard rotation. Half games I don't think work as well as all players want/need maximum court time. If you plan and make sure you record positional changes - our club website has a simple game planner here [link removed] - it is fairly easy and effective. You can work on different combinations and another advantage is that players stop "owning" just one position and become better team players (you know the ones that say "but I only play GA"). All players should be able to play in more than one position if the team needs(eg C/WA is common) so I think this is better than sharing a position between 2 players only half a gmae each. Keeping a record of who's on/off and what positions played, who's getting/missing goals is also useful to show any parents "concerned" about court time.