Rugby: React to space and attack

DESCRIPTION

5 players start on a straight line of cones about 5m apart. 10m away there are 5 more cones. Two of the 5 cones are blue, and two are red, and the middle cone is orange. The player on the orange cone never defends, he always attacks and always starts with the ball in hand.

The coach shouts a colour and the players who are standing on those cones must run forward and touch the cone 10m away from them. It will always be 2 defenders, but their positions will slightly vary. Once the first defending player has touched the furthest cone across from where he started the orange player can initiate attack. The orange player will have 2 supporters, one either side of him.

The ball carrier should look to attack the "Mid-Space" i.e. the space between the 2 defenders, as hard as he possibly can. This will cause at least one of the defenders to move in towards him, and therefore open up space for the supporter.

You will notice as the drill goes on, if the ball carrier runs at this space hard enough, the defenders are sometimes caught in two minds of "its your man" and the attacker will glide straight through the gap, but only if he is explosive from the word go!!

COACHING POINTS

• Ensure that the time and space available is sufficient for players to get the hang of the drill.
• Let the attack look for that space between the 2 defenders, and they simply react to the first defender that commits to the tackle.
• The option then is to turn the way the tackler is coming from, and play the supporter into that space left by the defender.
• NB - do not run towards a player and "fix" him, we want to MOVE the defender off his base.

• Progress the drill by making the time and space more limited.
• Instead of orange starting with the ball, grubber or chip it to them, adding to the difficulty of the drill.
• Defenders can be asked to do an up down once they reach the cones, and attackers can be set off by whistle to either shorten or lengthen time.