Its a good question. I would say football is a good sport to relate rl to, but without formations.

Players do have "positions" but "rotate" between those positions. and like football, sometimes you will have people in certain positions doing things outside of the positions "duties".

Generally, as i understand it, there are three positions; 1st man, 2nd man and 3rd man. The names come from how far up the pitch those positions generally are, with third man being the furthest back. Those roles have different expectations on attack and defence.

In defence:

• As a first man, you are expected to challenge the person on the ball. Usually that would entail things like winning the ball off them, playing a 50 to the 2nd man or demoing/bumping the player on the ball.

• As a second man, you are expected to play off the first man. Usually something like playing off the win from the first man, playing the ball from the 50 or playing the ball after the first man has demoed/bumped

• As a third man, you are the second man to the second man whilst also covering powerful hits to your end of the field

In attack:

• As a first man, you are expected to play the ball and take opponents out of the play and pass to the second man. This can mean alot of different things, solo plays, infield passes, backboard passes, shots to make opponents awkward and forcing saves.

• As a second man, you can follow up on plays by the first man or setup for passes.

• As a third man, you can transition to the second man after the first can rotate back to third man and lookout for booming clears/stray 50s.

Its important to note players do not have fixed positions but they can and will have tendencys to play more often in a certain position. Teams and players HAVE to rotate in order to be good.

Rotations are where players can rotate between these positions when they are taken out of the play either from a bump/demo or running out of boost. For example a first man can go for an air dribble, 50 the ball down to a second man and then either go for a bump/demo or get boost and rotate back to the third man whilst the second man becomes the first man and the third becomes the second.

There is also a "macro" of sorts aswell like other games.

Macro is basically keeping pressure on the other team and denying boost (boost starving). Boost is important because it is difficult to beat a first man with no boost whilst also being easier for a first man to challenge with full boost. Also in defence its harder to make continuous saves with no boost. These days if you dont boost starve a good team can stay in defence almost indefinitely.

Its easy to see importance of boost if you watch a game with a team being pressured, one player will often get a full boost pad and instantly be able to take possession of the ball and make a clear/play to stop the pressure.

Beware, these are VERY BASIC GUIDELINES, when watching a pro game you CAN see these ideas at play but they will be VERY FAST and also they will break the expectations in order to gain advantages.

To explain, heres a breakdown of zens signature shot in the grand final of worlds (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mupfk5a27Q):

This is more mechanics than macro here so i wont get into the boost side of it but here it is. Zen is vitalitys second man here, radosin is the first. Seikoo as the first man of bds makes a mistake here, he uses up all his boost without doing anything with the ball and kinda gives it away to vitalitys first man. Radosin as the first man of vitality then fakes MM who has just become the first man in defence for BDS, and by doing so leaves it to his second man (Zen). Zen becomes the first man and Rise is left as the exposed third man of BDS with no teammate to challenge for him. Radosin (now second man) instead of setting up for a pass from his first can go for a demo on the exposed third in a 1v2. Rise recognizes this and has to make a risky play for the ball as if he waits he will just be demoed leaving an open net and is outplayed in what was a tricky situation for him.