Wall or Arrowhead: Arrowhead Threats & Transitions by Jodie Palmer

Quick movement through the arrow

Sometimes teams will try to break this zone by throwing lots of quick, short throw and go passes. Generally the best way to break up this kind of offence is to allocate one person from the arrowhead to play a bit more person-to-person and take the the handler cuts and movement in front of the disc.

Popping can cause havoc in the arrowhead

When the disc is in the middle of the field, this role is best played by the middle of the arrowhead (aka front middle, as if they go off their line the middle middle should be able to plug any holes they leave. This will mean the thrower won’t have a stall, but that likely won’t matter if the offence is trying to play quickly.

Fig. 1: D1 is the ideal candidate to prevent short give & go passes in front of the zone by matching up with the receiving handler and trying to anticipate their movement.

Handlers can take lots of short passes if left alone; the near side wing defender isn't in the correct position and leaves a big gap down the near side which the handlers can exploit

When the disc is on the sideline, the on point and middle of the arrowhead need to keep their formation to stop any throws going down the sideline and encourage the disc to go back to the middle of the field. In this situation, the off point (D3 in the image below) can play more match-y and take any handler cuts and throw and go movement in front of the disc. The middle middle (D4) will then need to try and plug any holes that the off point (D3) leaves if they go off their line.

Fig. 2: D3 – the off point – is the best person to take handler crashes and give and go moves

Switching up to a person defence in the handler space helped to generate a turnover here; one of the arrowhead players marked out the dump

Long throws

As this zone is conservative, ideally the deep defender is positioned in a way that they can make a play on any deep throw that goes up. If a deep throw does complete, it is quite difficult for the rest of the zone to recover as there are so many defenders close to the disc/handlers. In this instance, the deep should go to the most dangerous continuation pass, and everyone else should go to match D taking the most dangerous options first. It is not uncommon for the deep defender to stand deep of all offensive threats, making long throws extra dangerous.

Deep throws against zones are usually a sign of desperation. It is important that you put your best deep defender in that space to minimise the chances of the offence completing passes.

Transitions

Planned transitions

You may plan to transition to a match defence at a certain point that offers an advantage to the defence or puts the offence at a disadvantage, such as when they are trapped on the sideline.
Using this zone as a transition zone can be useful to disrupt pool plays or force the offence to play at a slower pace than they like to start their possession. Both long and short hold transitions after a certain number of passes can be effective.

As this zone encourages the offence to throw lots of lateral passes back and forth across the field, it doesn’t really make sense to transition based on the disc’s lateral position (e.g., when it gets to the sideline), however it can be tough to play this zone in a short field, as the short lateral passes that are left open are more damaging when the offence is close to the end zone, so you would generally want to transition to match by the time the offence gets to the near brick mark.

Spontaneous transitions

You may decide to abandon the arrowhead for a match defence if it’s not working as intended. This could be as a result of offence breaking through or completing a long pass. As mentioned earlier, recovering from a completed long throw is really challenging, so it is usually a good idea to transition to match straight away if a huck completes. Similarly, when the disc is on the sideline, it is difficult to recover from a completed cross field deep throw (e.g., to the opposite wing), so this can be another good time to transition to match. When transitioning to match, it’s important that the defence prioritises the deepest players first, as the deep will be outnumbered and downfield continuation passes will be most damaging.