Run straight, run hard and run at pace

There’s a lot of skills going on when you are asking your players to run straight, pass accurately and run onto the ball.

The advantages are clear though:

• Going forward.
• Changing the point of attack quickly with a good pass.
• Fixing or holding defenders, so they don’t shift across to the next attacker.
• Attacking space with pace.

Run straight

First, we must encourage our players to “run straight”. This means the player’s hips are facing up the pitch. This is particularly important when the ball carrier hasn’t got a defender close by. It will draw a defender, and force them to square up.

Square up means the defender themselves must face up the pitch. Though they can go forward easily from this position, it’s more difficult to shift sideways to cover a pass. A square defender also allows the ball carrier to attack either shoulder. The defender doesn’t know whether to favour the right or the left shoulder, which can give an advantage to the ball carrier if they want to try to break through the tackle.

Some players will think they are running straight, when in fact they are drifting sideways, whilst other players just won’t understand the value of running straight.

You can use the exercise on page 4 to work on this. It uses external constraints to help train the body movements of your 10 to take the ball while they are running up the field. Of course, this training can apply to all the players.

Pass accurately

When players are running quickly, their upper body is not in the best position to pass the ball. There’s also the problems of the mathematical calculations of passing to a moving objective, at the right height and speed, while moving yourself.

While good technique is an essential part of this process, a lot of it comes down to feel and confidence. Feel is developed by playing through lots of game-like scenarios. Touch rugby in training can be a help or hindrance. While it affords plenty of passing opportunities under pressure, it doesn’t always replicate the go-forward pace of the game.

Mix up your types of touch rugby to make sure the players don’t get comfortable with one version.

Run onto the ball

If you coach or have coached young players, you will know that quite often, instead of running onto the pass, they jump to catch the ball. In other words, it’s not a natural action.

Again, lots of opportunities to race onto passes help develop the confidence to take the ball. Why not start players with different objects which are easy to catch, like towels or foam balls. Also try tennis balls or footballs.

The session on page 7 works on both running onto the ball and passing accurately at pace.