Defence in Rocket League is equally as important as offence. Being able to save a shot from any angle will severely increase your chances of improving as a player and is an important aspect to climbing the ranks. Knowing this, then, it is probably important to learn positioning and other factors that will be bound to help you out in general defence.

Beforehand, generally, shots that are going to be low to the ground will be:

Basic ground shots
Basic dribbles (With the ball not on top of the enemy player's car)
Ground pinches

Alternatively, shots that are generally going to be higher include:

Ceiling shots
Air dribbles
Flicks after a dribble with the ball on top of the enemy player's car
Flip reset shots

Knowing this general principle will guide you in knowing how to position yourself and the best ways of defending a shot from going into your net, based around how high the shot is going to be.

How to Position Yourself in the Net

Placing yourself in the right spot is a huge part of defence. If you find yourself around your net as you await a shot from the enemy team, you might assume that being in the center of the net is going to be the most effective position. However, this proves to be incorrect, as reaching the upper corners of the net will be much slower if you are in the middle on the goal.

Alternatively, you should position yourself near either the left post or the right post, depending on where the opposing player is approaching. If the enemy player who has control over the ball is approaching your net from the right, you should position yourself near the left post, facing the player.

On the flipside, if they are approaching from the left, you should place yourself nearby the right post. What this allows you to do is reach any point of the goal with ease when the ball is shot. Below is a diagram showing this visually. The green defender links to the green offender and the pink defender links to the pink offender.

A quick tip for quickly saving any shot coming towards you while in the net, remember to boost while jumping to accomplish a fast aerial which will allow you to reach the ball even faster than your average aerial.

Fixing Bad Positioning

As a side note, if you find yourself in a bad position in your net (for example, if your teammates miss the ball unexpectedly and you are now out of position), one way you may want to correct yourself is the use of a half-flip. In the clip below, my teammate missed the ball and the opposing team became very threatening. I was near the left goalpost, and as the offence was also coming from the left, it was going to be difficult to save the shot. Therefore, I made the decision to half-flip.

In this scenario, if I had not half-flipped, the enemy player would have gotten to the ball before me, meaning a goal for their team. However, half-flipping provides fast and effective defence. This, however, assumes that the shot will be low. If the shot from the other team ends up being high, a half-flip might not save you from bad positioning.

Using the Backboard

One undervalued part of defence is the use of the backboard. Although you shouldn't stick on the backboard awaiting a shot, if you can tell the enemy team is going to get a high shot, perhaps off-target, the backboard should definitely be considered. When the shot comes towards you on the backboard, flipping into it allows for an unpredictable and powerful clear that would be more difficult for the opposing team to follow up on.

Below is a clip of a two versus two ranked match. The opposing player went for a ceiling shot and you could notice this from their actions of driving high up the wall with the ball and advancing onto the ceiling. After recognising this, I positioned myself on the backboard and awaited the shot. By boosting and flipping, I managed to scrape the chances of getting a save, all while handing possession over to my teammate who was there to follow up.

You do not need to place yourself on the backboard if you see a shot go quite high. Perhaps you may not have time to drive onto the backboard. Alternatively, if you have a tank full of boost and the shot heads for your backboard, a possibility is to boost and jump upwards to hit the ball after the rebound. This could be even more unpredictable than being on the backboard, as the opposing team may expect you to miss the hit considering the height of the shot.

Using the Ceiling of Your Goal

Now that the basics of defence have been covered, you might consider a more difficult approach to defence. One quite common example of this in the higher ranks is to drive through your own net while holding your boost so that you drive onto the ceiling of your goal. This allows you to cover the higher areas of your goal if you see a shot about to go high.

Driving off the ceiling of your goal without jumping means that your flip has been conserved, as you have not used it yet. This means that you can flip into an oncoming shot to defend your goal without having to worry about your available flip time running too low.

Rocket League professionals have come to use this technique fluently without fail, but usually requires a lot of practice to perfect.

How to Improve Your Defence Skills

Speaking of practice, training packs are always a viable option. There are hundreds of training packs completely dedicated to defence mechanisms and will feature the ball being shot at different speeds at different parts of the net. You will be positioned in a different spot every time to properly test your skills. Remember these tips, though, and take your newly improved defence into ranked matches. Remember, you can't de-rank if you don't let the ball go into your net in the first place.

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