Good Bad Throws

Flat throws to space are your friend

Tadhg Bogan got another shoutout for nearly throwing the EUCF final away for Ranelagh, this time from the Eurozone podcast.

If you haven’t seen or need a reminder he nearly overthrew Sam Murphy out the side of the endzone and then out the side of the pitch a few points later. These were heartstopping moments on the sideline and we were fortunate that a player as fast and skilled as Sam was on the end of them.

These were obviously not good throws but they were good bad throws. I mentally rank throws on a sliding scale

• Good throws make things easy for the receiver and give the defender no play

• Bad throws either give the receiver no chance to catch them, or allow a defender to make a play.

• A good bad throw is one where the receiver will need to bail out the thrower but they are given the chance to do that.

Looking at the Good

There are two aspects to these throws that I really like:

• The disc was into space, which eliminated the defenders from the play. Almost too much into space, admittedly.

• The disc was thrown flat. This keeps the disc sitting, and also makes it significantly easier for Sam to read and catch.

These were principles that we worked on from the first pod session we did in 2022. Throwing with edge is definitely useful in certain situations but if you can be disciplined to throw flat and into space when you can, you’ll get away with a few throws that don’t come out perfectly.

You never know, it might turn out to be important.