Add a little pow to your POA! (Jumbo offensive system enhances weak football teams' chances of winning)

Have the TE and weakside T switch positions... then watch the good times roll!

Yes, we do play football in Australia. Most of the coaches are former American players, but most of the talent is home-grown. Play is open to 18-year-olds and over, with no upper age limit.

The coaches face many of the same problems that high school coaches do in the USA: limited practice time, small squads, small physical size, and uneven talent from year to year.

It's not uncommon to field a team of 15 raw beginners and 10 veterans against a team that has been playing together for six or seven years. Since most of the players come to us with no game experience, we have to put them through an accelerated learning curve.

The principles I've learned from this unique situation can be adopted by any high school coach who is faced with rebuilding after losing key players to graduation, a poor turn out, or a talent disadvantage. We used these principles to go from 4-6 to 9-1 with a squad made up of boys who had never played the game before.

Knowing that defenses have problems coping with formations they haven't played or practiced against regularly, we set out to design a basically sound formation that would be strong at the point of attack, easy to install, and could create a numbers advantage at the POA. This is important whether your team is more talented than the opposition or, even more so, whenever your team is not as talented.

Our offensive system, called Jumbo, is actually a Power I with one deceptively simple change. As shown in Diag. 1, it places the tight end (TE) on the weakside and an extra tackle on the strongside.