Stop over-committing at rucks

At the top level, coaches talk about “ruck bullets” and “ruck inspectors”. 

This terminology goes a long way to explain why your players may fail to ruck efficiently – you either pile in too many bodies or the players who are there don’t win the ball cleanly.

When a player arrives at a ruck, they must not waste their only bullet. They have one chance to “shoot” and that shot needs to clear a threat to the ball. They should not commit themselves if they are not needed - they save their bullet for the next ruck. Or, if they do go, they must make sure that they take out their target.

Sometimes, and this is even worse, they do not even fire a bullet. Instead, they become a ruck inspector, merely leaning on the ruck, getting in the way of players who have work to do. Either the arriving player makes a difference or they stay well clear.

We can rid ourselves of ruck inspectors by creating better decision-makers – that means lots of game-related practices where players have to decide when to ruck and what type of rucking they need to do.

To not waste the ruck bullet, the arriving player must clear the threat. In the majority of cases, “low man wins”. This is when the rucker is lower than the threat to the ball and continues to drive forward. Mark Calverley’s fun activity on page 4 will keep your players low and making strong decisions over the ball.

The clever way to win with just three players is to use what we might call the “latch” or “snake”. The ball carrier goes into contact with another player attached. Utilise this tactic in close quarters and you can win the next ruck with just two players if you do it well. As Sean Holley says on page 5, it is all in the detail.

Remember that the latching player must stay on their feet if the tackled player goes to ground or they will be penalised under the 2021 Global Law Trials.