Turn your players into dominating tacklers capable of stopping the opposition on the gain line and winning turnovers. Develop player’s ability to dominate the tackle and get into position to compete for the ball afterwards. Then, improve your players’ decision making at the tackle and their knowledge of the tackle laws.
Start with an attacking player holding a ball, on the middle blue cone and a defender on the yellow cone opposite.
Call a colour, say ‘GREEN’ and the defender moves to that cone.
The ball carrier runs across when the defender reaches the cone and the defender moves to tackle the ball carrier.
As soon as the tackle is made, the tackler recovers, reacts to your call to make another tackle.
Each tackler makes 4 or 5 tackles against different ball carriers before swapping over.
KEY TECHNIQUES
Tackler plants a foot as close as possible to the ball carrier and hits low with his shoulder.
Tackler drives his legs through the tackle as he makes contact.
Tackler drives the ball carrier to ground and finishes on top of him.
Tackler gets back to his feet in a strong low position as quickly as possible.
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
