Symmetry

When playing against an inexperienced team, have you heard teammates say this:
"We should should force forehand, because their forehands are weaker"?

I have. Lots.

This makes sense if your aim is to choose a D that will make it harder for the opponents. The forehand force and backhand force will produce different results. In this situation, the two options are not equal or "symmetric".

Yet experienced teams sometimes forget this when designing or choosing other tactics.

Examples

• which is harder to throw: a forehand dump, or a backhand dump?
  
• if you put the disc into play on the left hand side line, should your horizontal stack have the receivers equally deep on the left and right hand sides?
  
• if a player has better offence than defence, should they start more O or D points?
  
• if an elite player can have more impact on offence than defence (since they can throw up to 50% of the passes, but can only defend ~1/7th of an opposition team), should they start more O or D points?
  
• if the disc is put into play on the sideline, should your zone's wings be equally deep/in-field?
  
• if a zone defender is covering two opponents, should they stand closer to the deeper player or shorter player?
  
• if your team is forcing straight-up, and you are guarding a cutter out in the open, should you position yourself between the cutter and the stack, or position yourself so the cutter is between you and the stack?
  
• if your team has a handler with a strong forehand, should they play more left point or right point?

To summarise: if there is a imbalance in some team strength or weakness, consider choosing an imbalanced tactic that advantages your team. Instead of just choosing the default symmetric option.

You know they're good when...

You know a play is good when it is so impressive you had never even contemplated someone could do it.

Here are some of the most impressive plays I have seen or heard of:

• layout D by the dump defender - to handblock the thrower
  
• the soak: a handblock that gets caught
  
• layout catch, but flying out of bounds - touching down with the hand on the way out, to prevent the turnover
  
• leaping up for a catch, missing, but catching the macked pass on the way down
  
• 2 handblocks in a point - on the exact same point on the field
  
• no-look upside-down shovel pass into a running, yet unsuspecting, teammate's lap for a goal
  
• a footblock at waist height