Rugby: Defensive Touch

As the start of the season nears, continue to build your players resilience to contact and ensure they?re up to speed with their physical conditioning with this demanding session.

Develop the aggressive Blitz defending style in you game and don’t let the opposition get comfortable on the ball with this session.

Set up 4 grids of about 8-10m by 5m.

3 players start on the first grid, working from one end to the other, covering the 5m distance.

• The aim is to stay in one straight line as they go up, and also keep themselves evenly spaced
• Once they have achieved that, they fall back into the next grid diagonally across and back. Now there should be 6 players on the line, and they all work together to come off the line, as one.

Players continue working like this, until they reach the end of the grid.

Once the coach blows his whistle the line may press off.

Players line up together along the line of the 1st set of cones.

On the signal of the coach all the players advance to the 3rd set of cones (20 meters away), making sure they all keep together in a straight line.

The players then retreat 10 meters to the 2nd set of cones, making sure they stay in line.

From the 2nd set of cones the players then advance a further 20 metres to the 4th set of cones and then retreat 10 meters back, to the previous set of cones.

• Get all players into teams of 3
• One group of 3 with bibs start as defenders 
• In a 10mx10m grid - the other groups line up either side of the grid as attackers. Split evenly.
• The defenders work together to stop the attacking side scoring and getting through 
• After a tackle is made or a try is scored, the attacking team pop the ball off to a team on the other side of the grid who attack straight away
• Defending side need to react and realign quickly to stop the next team from scoring
• Start as shoulder on and then can progress to full contact
• Defence works for 1 minute and then change
• Competition - Team with the least tries scored against them wins

The first player in the line begins with the ball. As he approaches the first cone and passes to player 2 who is supporting. Player 1 carries on their run and hits the tackle bag before running backwards to player 2 original position. Player 2 on receiving the ball passes the ball onto player 3 before hitting the tackle bag and back pedalling to player 3 original position.

When the ball reaches player 5, that player side steps behind the others back to position 1 where the drill is repeated.