Sharpen up your decision-making under pressure

1. tell them there’s a reason for everything

In all the training you do, make players aware of why they are doing the activity. If they know, they will put it into a match context. For instance, try using the ruck, offload and pass activities on page 4. Gavin Blackburn’s exercise makes players consider at what stage they need to take contact and when to pass.

You can either tell them, give them some ideas, or ask them. Whichever method you prefer, you need to know the reasons for working on a particular skill.

The activity is particularly good because it mixes up the skillsets needed, just like in a game situation.

2. do FEWER “NO- DECISION” drills

Drills are exercises without decisions. Drills are good to hone an isolated technique – for instance the body angles for a good drive into a ruck, or running lines to cut back on a switch. However, a drill requires no decision-making element. It doesn’t require a player to think when and where to use a technique.

So, though you will have some drills in your session, make sure you add in various decision-making elements. For instance, after a drill for a skill, you could set up different starting points, put in defenders, create a couple of possible scenarios with separate targets. In each case the player or players will have to choose either WHEN to use the technique or WHERE to use the technique.

In Colin Ireland’s kicking activity on page 5, it starts with a drill and then moves into match-like situations with targets and chasers.

3. allow degrees of success

A good decision-making exercise has more than one possible successful outcome. Though, ultimately, we want an attack to score or a defence to turnover the ball, there are times when ground won is a good outcome.

For example, if you are working on exiting your 22m area, you will want to clear your lines in some form. The players will have to choose which method and you can temper the defence to give them different possible outcomes. Some outcomes will be better than others but the skill on your part is to allow more than one “good” outcome.