The clearing pass from a ruck isn’t always made by a scrum half. Every player in your team needs to be able to perform it as it is unrealistic to expect the 9 to be at every breakdown.
This activity is designed to make as many clearing passes as possible to allow you to see everyone’s ability. You then help players improve.
Two lines of players face a ruck pad. Player 1 in the line on the right has the ball.
They run to the ruck pad, go to ground and place the ball for player 2 who passes to player 1 from the left line.
Player 1 goes to ground at their ruck pad and player 2 gathers the ball and passes it to player 3 from the right line who continues the activity along with player 4.
TECHNIQUE
Hands follow through to the target.
Point the foot towards the target.
Sweep the ball towards the target.
Receiving player takes ball at pace.
Players run back to their lines through the passing lane to make it more realistic.
We have plenty of tag resources on this site, and I’m keen to ensure they can easily be upgraded into full sessions. Perhaps they won’t be doing much rucking, but there’s plenty else to learn from tag beginnings. MORE
Ian Diddams reviews the latest law directives around the ruck, and looks at how you might adjust your training sessions to help your players become more effective in this contact area. MORE
Upgrade your good tacklers by making them more aware of the type of tackles which would prevent offloads or create opportunities for turnovers. That will make them defenders not just tacklers. MORE
How far should you go in developing better evasion skills by setting up footwork exercises without defenders? Is it better to let them play and discover? MORE
In essence, I wanted to create defensive games which would force attacking teams to realign with more depth. The rewards were aimed squarely at the defence. If they were successful, they would either gain the ball, or in the case of the overloaded game (where there were more attackers than defenders), they would move over into the attacking team. MORE
