Evasion is a fundamental movement skill. Players use in pretty much all their activities, without necessarily focusing on the specific skills they need.
Without becoming too bogged down in the technical requirements, you want to improve your players starting and stopping, balance, change of direction and acceleration. With that comes an awareness of space, time, teammates, the opposition and the ball.
There are three approaches you can take: Work on general movement skills, develop a specific movement skill (like a side-step or spin) or pose problems for the players to discover their own movement solutions.
Underpinning this, you need to understand your own players’ capabilities and limitations.
Here are some warm-up exercises where you can place a little more emphasis on how the players respond to movement cues and clues. Nearly of all of them include a ball.
Go-forward evasion goes to one of the main rugby principles of why we want better footwork – to go forward towards the opposition try line. This exercise builds up to game-like scenarios, so you can just use the first activity for your warm-up if you want.
Evasion is means you need to evade something. Step to the edge creates a visual clue of what to avoid. Players have to adjust to what’s in front of them, while still going forward.
If you want something a bit more chaotic, an old favourite of mine is Reaction squares. This has the players stopping, starting, changing angles, bending down and looking for space.
Ball carriers have a better chance of beating tacklers if they are going forward and changing their angles. Encourage players to do this, even if they are facing two or more defenders. MORE
The receiver often takes a pass just before being tackled. If he can get to the edge of the defender, he might break through or offload the ball in contact. Work on that valuable skill with this session. MORE
Use “reaction squares” to get players moving into space with the ball in their hands. This is a fun activity and elements can be part of the warm-up to other sessions. MORE
Look at this great and more advanced version of a game we call Nevada Smith. Plus, have a look at Evasion Triangles as well, which could be a progression from this exercise. MORE
Let's consider planning our technical and tactical awareness to exploit a narrow defence. In other words, if there's an opportunity to attack when the attack has more numbers than the defence. In the simplest terms, that might be a 2 v 1. These sessions consider 3 v 2s and 4 v 3s and how and when to use the miss pass. MORE
This is a great game for when you are short of numbers and have a variety of positions at training. Use it to develop catch and pass and also for players that find identifying/exploiting space challenging. The aim of the game is to score as many tries as you can, within a set period of time. MORE
In the third part of a session, after a warm-up game and then a skill drill, introduce a skill game. The game is still focused on the objective. It gives the players a chance to explore the skill in the context of the game and see why it is relevant. MORE
In Lockdown planning: Quick ruck ball sessions, we focused on applying pressure on the defence. Now, let's plan for the other side of the ball. France's defence coach, Shaun Edwards says that it is his main metric for success: slowing down ruck possession. To enhance learning, you are better off focusing on an “arc” of learning for a specific area. This means spreading out the training over a number of weeks, rather than dedicating one session to this. MORE
If you are able to train, then you will be aiming to improve your players' skills and tactical appreciation around specific areas of the game. If you are in lockdown, it's a chance to hone your session planning in readiness for your return. MORE
Here's my analysis of four different scrum half passes. Each one has their own style and is effective in its own way. Use these clips to inform your own coaching and share with your 9s to help them find improvements in their passing. MORE