Here’s a 30 minute upskill booster for either senior or junior players. It’s aimed to fit into your whole session.
You’ve got 90 minutes at training. The first 10-15 minutes will be your warm-up. At the end, you will playing a game, plus add in some set-piece work.
That leaves you with 30 minutes to upskill your players. Boost their current skillset with activities that put them under pressure to be technically accurate.
Here are two sessions, one for more senior players and one for less experienced players. You can, of course, adapt up and down to suit your team.
A little more contact here, with the players aiming to upskill their body positions in a 1 v 1 situation.
You can run this with the whole squad if you have enough ruck pads, or have four players per pad. There’s a mini-game you can use in this session or as a reminder for the next session.
This will need a couple of minutes before the session to set up the cones. It develops the players because they won’t always be running straight lines when they pass.
You are upskilling their basic passing and support running lines.
You can run this with groups of up to 10 players at a time if you want to be really intense.
This is a low-impact contact session to work on the roles of the ball carrier, tackler and the first two players around them. You are upskilling their body positions and support roles.
Split off into fours if you have enough coaches. Mix up the combinations of players between groups. Start at a low intensity.
Emphasise the language and communication you want around this situation. For example, fight to the ground or yards after contact.
Work on the roles and skills of the attackers and defenders closest to the tackle area in a tight space. This activity puts the players in game-like situations to look for solutions.
Though there are some principles to follow, this activity will give the players an opportunity to try out different ideas. Expect messy outcomes. MORE
Winning a ruck with just one player is a great way to maximise numbers post contact. In open spaces, this is a top skill to develop to retain quick ball and play again.
Attacking away from congested areas, this is an ideal way to keep quick ball going. It’s also a good individual skill for normal rucks too. MORE
This session will help players highlight their core skills under pressure. It works especially on short passes when the ball carrier is running “offline”.
Offline means the passer is either running towards the intended receiver or away. MORE
This is a game like session which recognizes that sometimes the players are not perfectly aligned from a ruck and have to adjust their running lines accordingly.
A good session to mix up forwards and backs. You can also identify decision makers who happily take on the role of first receiver. MORE
One player goads another, then touches the line and races to the other end to avoid being touched by the chaser. It’s a like smaller version of the Bangladeshi game of Kabadd MORE
Create attacking shape, where forwards understand where they are supposed to run to support the next phase of play. The groups of forwards are called pods and need to work together. MORE
Should an attack be successful at a 2 v 1 every time? At the top level, most of the time you would have thought, yet you would be surprised how often they fail.
Add in another attacker and defender, or even two attackers and one defender, and that ratio of success drops very quickly.
But it is still a golden opportunity to make ground and even score. So, you need to increase the success rate, and you do this by creating as many scenarios as you can. MORE
Dropped balls or loose kicks mean that the ball is on the ground and needs recovering. Use this session to work on the skills and decision-making around this situation.
It’s not a natural action to fall on the ball. Help the players understand how to develop this technique as smoothly as they can. MORE
Get your players in place quickly to attack at pace from the next ruck in this simple realignment activity.
Creating and keeping depth in an attacking line running onto the ball at pace and still have space and time to pass. MORE
Improve your players’ footwork and ability to evade contact. The “hot box” means your players will need to use their peripheral vision and their ability to see where defenders are. MORE