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
How often do you despair that your players can’t score when there’s an overlap? Why is it players drift out in attack and play into the hands of the drift defence? Here are my simple solutions. MORE
Against an organised defence, you can use closely packed groups of forwards to dent the line and then attack the recovering, disorganised defence. Often known as pods, this requires organisation, especially around the roles of the players in terms of carrying the ball and supporting that ball carrier.
In its simplest format, after a set-piece like a scrum or lineout, the forwards who were not involved in winning the ball back after the first tackle, realign to take the next pass. This is in the expectation that the backline doesn't penetrate the line the first time. MORE
Use this activity to improve players’ ability to scan what’s in front of them. It will allow the players to develop their footwork options before contact or in open play.
All the targets are in front of the ball carrier, so they will need to go forward but still avoid the defender. MORE
"With the return to rugby, I’m really worried that my team (U13s) will have forgotten lots of things about rugby. In particular, I’m trying to work out when and how to introduce contact and tackling."
This question came from a coach in Gloucester and is typical of lots of concerns around this area of the game.
It is true that the players will have "forgotten" lots of skills.
Here's how I would approach this situation. On the next page are two tackling exercises to support training.
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‘Escape the square’ is a quick game that can be used in warm ups to get players focused on moving the rugby ball in attack, scanning for space and communicating with team-mates. MORE
Improve your players’ awareness of how to move together as a defensive line.
A defensive line needs to know who’s covering who and then double up if they can to make a tackle. MORE