Everything you need to know about playing – Wing Attack

Published on May 29, 2025

Wing Attack

The WA is a key playmaker who works the ball from the centre third to the goal third, feeding it into the shooters to create scoring opportunities. WA needs agility, speed, and the ability to work their angled drives to be an option for the pass but always being able to clear and create opportunities for others.

3 key focuses to nail:

Taking control of the centre pass
Feeding and holding strong on the ring
Strategic Thinking: Understand the game’s flow, anticipate when to drive and when to create space.

1) On a centre pass

The best WA works in partnership with their GA on centre passes. We love our WA’s to make the decisions of what play the team makes on every centre pass. The WA needs to make eye contact with the GA to understand who is taking the centre pass and who will prepare for the second phase depth drive.
The WA needs good preparation on centre passes, and need a variety of attacking moves or set plays to help them break free to receive the ball.

Some of our favourite plays on a C-pass: A split, deep cross, wide play, W hold, screen and overload. You will find all of these set ups on the NETFIT App

2) Depth of second phase

If the GA receives the centre pass, we need our WA to quickly drive down through the goal third on an angle to receive the next pass. (hitting the top of the ring is the goal)
However, If your timing is out, or the ball doesn’t get released to you, keep driving through to move out of the middle channel to create space. The goal is to gain an advantage for scoring by creating space for a teammate to receive a pass on top of the ring.
You can then work the wide channel to come back up and re-offer. Just remember to avoid crowding this middle channel with busy short re-offering leads.

3) Hitting the circle edge

You need to look at how many times you can convert your teams centre pass into the goalers.
We like to call this – Your centre pass conversions.
Sometimes it doesn’t just flow in the attack third and you find yourself driving on and off the ring, working many preliminary moves until we give the ball to an available shooter.
Make sure you don’t get stuck in pockets. If you do get forced deep into pockets, work yourself off the ring and reset at the mid or top position.

4) Working on & off the ring

If the pass isn’t on, “reset” back to the transverse line with the WD or GD to work back onto circle edge. It’s important you don’t force the ball. A WA’s job is to create the best opportunity to score. So when it’s not on, keep things calm.
Also consider working the ball in channels, which means looking at the court in 3 lanes. Dividing the court into 3 imaginary sections to help you create space and maintain court balance to work it back to feeding position. We filmed a great video to explain this to players, and a drill that can help coaches.

5) Feeding the ball

Stand tall, sometimes as feeders we can get hunched over which can make our pass predictable and we are easily missed as an option. Keep yourself upright, open shoulders to see the whole goal ring before passing, enabling them to see all options.
Place the ball into space and to the goalers’ advantage. Building a relationship with your goalers to understand how they like the feed is key.
When goalers are putting their shots up before or after training, ask if you can feed them a few balls – communication and understanding is the key to every netball teams success. We can learn so much when we ask the question and work for each other on court.
Don’t be scared to add a baulk or look away pass to throw off defenders.

6) Ball coming out of defence

It is common to find WA’s way up in the centre third as their team is transitioning the ball out of defence. While you probably feel that you are helping, more often than not you are just clogging up the space for the defenders to bring the ball down the court.
As a WA, we must develop a sense of when to hang back and allow the ball to be brought to us, and when we need to get involved in the play and drive down.
A trick we use is that we wait back at the goal third transverse line for the defence to work it over the defence transverse line – which is our green traffic light to lead.
“Go somewhere first before your drive”, as it will outmanoeuvre defenders so we can lead for the ball freely.

7) Passing over tall players

Most (not all) WA can be short and zippy so it’s a common challenge we face to see over big hands.
Try looking long and through their hands with the ball held high for a high release pass.
We love to use a baulk to shift the hands so we can see the space.
Once the hands are moved, we like to step through with our inside foot and use our leg as a barrier to hold our own body position. We have a video on the NETFIT App that explains this well.
Don’t get discouraged, your hight is your power. What we lack in length, we can make up in speed and smarts.

8) Be the energy

All WA’S are leaders. It just goes with the role.
If the attack end feels flat, you need to be able to spark up the energy with positive communication, early workloads and fast leads in the attack and keep backing your feeds.
When things feel frantic in attack, a good WA can steady the play, take a breath, reset, hold possession and remind the team to go back to basics.
Help the goalers build their self belief by positive talk and being “HERE IF YOU NEED”. Let them know what a great job they are doing even when they miss. The talk in the ring needs to be positive at all times. It takes a whole team to get that ball in the ring.