Side stack is a great offence to learn for all kinds of reasons, I would encourage everyone to learn and practice playing sidestack because it focus on recognition of space, confident cutting, and the ability to win 1v1 match ups.
Chosing the right offence for your team is a difficult task and depends on lots of dynamic variables. But even if you have a good offence for your team that you are confident playing, there is a wealth of value in learning how to play side-stack.
All offensive structures are built around the same principals.
- Identify and attack the space created by the offence
- Clear out of the space to allow new cutters in
- Repeat
What is a side-stack?
A sidestack is not disimilar to the traditional vertical stack consisting of two handlers in the back-field and 5 cutters in a vertical line upfield. However the difference comes in the position of the stack. As the name suggests the stack is placed on the side of the field rather than in the centre. The point of this is to create one giant lane to cut into instead of two smaller lanes (the break-side and open-side)
What makes side-stack special?
The main advantage of a side-stack over a conventional vertical stack is the amount of space you are giving to the primary cutter. Not only is the open lane huge but they will also have a lot of break space to clear into and still be a viable option thanks to the space opened up by moving the stack
Why Learn Side-Stack:
- Requires strong cutting and throwing fundamentals
- There is nowhere to hide, when it is your turn to cut you have to go out there and give it your all.
- Reinforces good clearing principals, since there is a long way from the cutting lane to the stack you have to be clear and efficient with your clearing to allow the offence to progress.
The best video to teach good cutting technique https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqpPfVZ1HeI
Advantages:
- Having such an obvious first cutter adds a set of physical and mental advantages. In a 1v1 match up, your defender is forced to set up facing you, so they can best guard your movements, which means their hips are turned towards you. You should have seen above, that the best way to get open is to beat a defenders hips. Since they willl not be able to backpedal as quickly as you can move forward, eventually they will have to commit their hips to a run, or you will brease past them. Given the large amount of space given to the primary cutter they should almost always be able to win an open under cut.
- There is no stack in the centre of the field which itself is largely advantageous
- There are no pick calls, to disrupt your flow.
- While there is no traditional breakside however, the handler still has access to leading breakthrows into a big space for large gains.
- There is a deep throw available from any part of the field, since the stack isn't in the middle of the field, the handlers don't have to worry about throwing over the stack on deep throws.
- A traditional defence tries to force you into having a smaller and smaller open lane but with a sidestack the open lane remains incredibly large.
Disadvantages:
- Side-stack is prone to poaching by the defence. due to only having one cutting lane, defenders know exactly where they need to be in order to clog the lane and slow down the flow of the offence.
- Although there are some very easy ways to deal with poaching against a side-stack it normally involves breaking away from the side-stack.
- It's hard work, especially for the cutters. There is a lot of space which means that there is a lot of ground to cover by the cutters to enter and cut in the active space. Unlike in a horizontal stack which sees the cutters start in their positions.
- It is hard to adapt to non-conventional match defence. If you are faced with a surprise zone set, all of your downfield players have clumped together in an unreachable space.
- You have to sacrifice the use of one sideline in exchange for the central space, which could cause issues in strong cross winds or against certain defences.
How to play side-stack:
Side-stack is by no means limited to the string that is shown in the animation above, but there are plenty of adaptations and set plays available from this versitile set up. While it cannot be denied that side-stack is prone to poaches and lane flashing these aren't always the end of the offence. Due to the large amount of space available poaches are fairly easy to exploit using secondary cutters or set plays
Principals of a side-stack:
- Create large amounts of space for cutters
- Isolate 1v1 match ups
- Allow cutters time and space to get open
- Aggressive continuation cutting
Flood Play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9ETRht5F58&ab_channel=AUDL (2mins)
Side-Stack Plays: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1381721015279259&ref=watch_permalink (25mins)
Common Mistakes:
- Setting the Side-stack too deep
- Starting your cuts from too deep gives the defence the ability to shade your cuts under more as they will have more time to recover position on a floating deep shot.
- Not giving the primary cut enough time to get open
- With all of the space available, you have the opportunity to make several cutting moves without cutting off anyone else.
- As the second cutter, wait your turn, the last thing you want is to be cutting into a messy lane.
- Not attacking the poach
- It is very common to see poaches or lane flashes against a side-stack but it is important to attack the poaches, due to the large amount of space available poaches are fairly easy to exploit.
- Always continue with aggressive cutting to draw them out of the lane for the other cutters; you'll be surprised at how many poaches are unwilling to follow you properly on a full cut, leaving you wide open.
*This is by no means an exhaustive list of the pro's and con's of a side-stack.