Get your players used to stretching and placing the ball as far back as possible after a tackle to make it more difficult for the defence to reach over and steal or disrupt it.
After the tackle is made, the farther away your player can place the ball from the defence, the harder it is for the opposition to disrupt it. Encourage good placement habits with these exercises.
One ball and three cones per player. A ruck pad for the development.
Get players to lie between three different-coloured cones. You call out a colour and the ball carrier uses their core to shift the ball to that cone (see middle picture).
Spread the cones out at different distances, so some placements are stretches.
Having gone to ground, the tackled player looks to place the ball long, as far from the defenders as possible and reducing the width of the tackle gate. Use of the core (middle of the body) is vital.
Once players are used to placing the ball, get a ball carrier to run into a ruck pad holder, drive them back 0.5m, go to ground and place the ball as far as possible from the support defender (see bottom picture).
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