Archive for Rugby Coaching
Coaching the Offload
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One of the students at Leeds University Rugby League recently asked me how he could improve his offload and was there any exercises he could practice…
For you as a coach, the easiest and one of the most effective ways to teach your players ‘Offloading’ is the Hit & Spin Technique, which is actually poorly named because you actually Spin and then Hit. To teach this technique:
a. Have a player with a shield standing 5 metres in away from the play the ball, in the ‘A’ defenders position (one off the ruck);
b. Have a runner come through and take a pass off the dummy half and run straight at the ‘A’ defender;
- Just before the runner gets to the defender he starts to spin, and here is the critical part:
- If he is on the LEFT side of the ruck he will carry the ball in two hands and lead (or hit) with his LEFT shoulder;
- If on the RIGHT side he will lead with his RIGHT shoulder;
- This will ensure that he is able to deliver the pass correctly to his support.
- The dummy half scoots out from the play the ball and while running behind the ball runner, he takes the offload.
- The dummy half then becomes the next ball runner and the drill continues;
c. When coaching offloads, you should also teach the correct ball carry:
- Many players these days are carrying the ball for the spin pass. Get them out of this habit
and get them back to holding the ball in the middle, with fingers spread underneath and
thumbs on top.
- To demonstrate the effectiveness of this ball carry, have a player turn his back to you and
you bear hug him, but holding his arms ‘above’ the elbow, he can now flick his wrists and pass the ball 5 metres with a wrist flick.
There are plenty of other ways of offloading, passing under the arm pits, passing around a defender, the one handed back flick, but most of these are high skill sets. The hit and spin is relatively simple and can easily be taught, you can then build it into a pattern or a play such as the dummy half scooting and dummying to an inside runner, then passing to a straight runner who hits and spins and picks up the dummy half on the loop who fires the pass out to his backline.
Enjoy Your Rugby
Neil
www.1RugbyCoach.com
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Defence – How Do You Coach Communication?
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Over the past few weeks, I’ve received several questions regarding how to coach communication in your defensive line? Some were concerned about only part of their defence talking while others were more interested in having an effective slide.
Both of these are to be addressed if you wish to have an effective defensive structure. Firstly I’d just like to point out that if you’re implimenting a slide defence, it should only be utilised when you’re out-numbered or stretched and you’re having to over work at reducing the threat.
A couple of coaching points to try are;
1. In your training sessions, try to split your defence into 3 groups, left, right and middle. So your left side wing, centre, second row, half, same for the right with the loose floating and the middle consists of your front row.
2. When performing defence drills, play them against each other with penalties for the losing groups.
3. Point out that every defender only has to talk to the guy next to them
4. Once the ball goes past a defender it’s his job to increase their talk. i.e. the talk always comes from the inside when a slide defence is in operation.
5. Stop the session if the line is breached and ask the players who was at fault and how could it have been averted.
Usually after a couple of errors the players become more aware and switch on to their particular role in the slide defence.
The other advantage of working in their groups in training is they gain more of a bond and it becomes quite competitive between the groups as to who’s performing the best i.e. where are the tries being scored?
For a more in depth view on defence drills plus video go to;
Neil Harmon
http://www.1RugbyCoach.com
