PHOTO LEARNING

Photo: made by Peter Besemer

We see a duel between defender PKC player Laurens Leeuwenhoek (#26) and attacker Fortuna player Arjan Theil (#5).

Leeuwenhoek is a rookie in the Korfbal League. He is a talent. He is playing in the Dutch National team under 21. He is tall, around 1.95 meters but he still slim as a needle.

Theil has a lot of experience. He plays already on the highest level in the Netherlands for many years.

Theil is over 30 years old. Theil is about 1.96 meters and he has a strong body.

Both players are playing mostly in the role of Bear in the attack and in defence they play mostly as Centers.

Let we try to analyse this photo.

Especially I want to look at the tall bodies, the use of the body height.

In modern korfball we like tall players. But do they really make profit of their body height?

Look at the attacker Theil.

He comes from the post and gets the ball by a double, a wide pass by his Tiger.

The ball comes to him by his right side and rather (too) low to get the ball in a shot position.

If you look very precisely then you see that the left hand is still a bit open. So the ball is just received.

The body of attacker Theil is rather well lined up to the post.

His balance of his body is still too far on his right back foot. The trunk of his body is low, so is the centre of gravity.

The technical conditions are far from good enough for the perfect shot! He can only make a forced shot.

(What people cannot see is what I know: Theil made the wrong choice, he made a shot from this bad position.)

Look at the defender Leeuwenhoek:

Leeuwenhoek has to interact with the attacker, to force Theil to the wrong decision. Did he really influence a decision?

The position of Leeuwenhoek is moreover a stradle than a step. There is a very small step with his left leg towards Theil. The balance of Leeuwenhoek , the body position restricts the flexibilty of the steps.

In this position the balance of Leeuwenhoek is on his right foot, his right arm give support to keep him in this balance. His balance is really very weak and give him only one possibilty: to intimidate a shot with the right arm.

If Theil has the option to read this position, he should definitely go for a running in starting from Theil's right arm. (In that option he needs a an assister.)

The defender Leeuwenhoek is "sitting" very low and a bit backwards. The defender is more "sitting" than standing and reaching. His balance makes that he is not very flexible on the main axen of defence.

His left arm is simulating if he wants to block the ball. But there is no chance his total reach is too low. Besides that his left arm is still orientated too much on the right side of Theil and by doing that he will never block the shot.