Rugby: Going to ground and rucking

Teach your team to ruck safely, effectively and quickly. By going 'through the gate' you'll avoid giving away penalties and encourage better binding

Put your best foot forwards and drive, drive, drive the opposition back in this quick ball at the ruck technique session!

4 blue players must try and defend with shields two gates from the attacking red team.

The ball carrying player must meet the defending players and then go to ground and place the ball. Once this has been done the attacking side must form bind together and ruck the shields out of the way - to 'come through the gate'.

The final red player to come through collects the ball and runs anti-clockwise to the next gate and the next set of defenders to repeat the drill.

The two original defenders must now move to defend the other side of the grid.

Set Up:

• 3 players
• one in tackle suit
• one with ball
• one tackle bag

The player in the tackle suit crouches or kneels next to tackle bag which is representing an attacking player.

The suited player tackles the bag and the player with the ball places it next to tackle bag to simulate the tackled player placing the ball.

The suited player then returns to their feet and gets ready to compete for ball with the third player who clears out suited player the win the ball.

Players start face down, on the coach's whistle players get to their feet to contest the contact area.

Red player 1 and the blue player should be closer to the ball so that they reach it quicker and present a target to be cleared away by the supporting red defender.

As the second red player reaches the ruck they should bind with their team mate to contest the ball, with the aim of disrupting the ball.

Condition the drill in favour of 1 team, in this case the blue team.

All players lay on their fronts behind the tackle bags. On the coaches whistle, the 2 teams move to contest possession.

The blue players can move straight over the bag to contest, but only the 1st red player can do the same. The other 2 red players have to run round the cones before moving in to counter ruck.