Though there are lots of elements to a good, strong, scrummaging position, keep it simple once you have established the principles, so your players have got a template to work towards every scrum.
Go through the key building blocks for good scrummaging:
Feet: around shoulder width apart, on the toes.
Hips: tilt the hips so the backside is out.
Scaps: pull the shoulder blades in towards each other – elbows bent and back (like chicken wings).
Head: neutral so the chin isn’t on the chest or facing upwards.
Crouch into the right position, balanced.
Then lean on another player, to check that the knees are directly below the hips after the engagement.
Warm up by pushing a ruck pad along the ground. Works on keeping the feet active, the hips square and the weight moving forwards not downwards.
Have the player resting on a rugby ball in a scrum profile position. Use peer coaching, and have another player check the right body positions.
COACHING TIP
The hips are the most important element, check the tilt.
TECHNIQUE
Knees below hips.
Keep the scaps back at all times.
Look through your eyebrows, so keeping your head neutral.
DEVELOP THE PRACTICE
This scrum profiles session is a warm up for more scrummaging.
With older players, work on gentle one v one work. The players can bind and lean on each other, with one player slowly raising and lowering the height of both players. They can also move slowly side-to-side.
Further develop by putting one player against two. Only the one player pushes, the other two have to resist but not push back.
My “Find the bib” game is adapted from the game called “Drop-off touch”. It challenges the players to look for mismatches and also create them too. MORE
A fun game which forces players to push their passes hard towards the target, improving their accuracy and pass strength. One group aims to intercept a pass with their own ball (the “skeeter"). This activity encourages hard passes to a target, so will create better passing habits. MORE
Let's consider planning our technical and tactical awareness to exploit a narrow defence. In other words, if there's an opportunity to attack when the attack has more numbers than the defence. In the simplest terms, that might be a 2 v 1. These sessions consider 3 v 2s and 4 v 3s and how and when to use the miss pass. MORE
This is a great game for when you are short of numbers and have a variety of positions at training. Use it to develop catch and pass and also for players that find identifying/exploiting space challenging. The aim of the game is to score as many tries as you can, within a set period of time. MORE
In the third part of a session, after a warm-up game and then a skill drill, introduce a skill game. The game is still focused on the objective. It gives the players a chance to explore the skill in the context of the game and see why it is relevant. MORE
In Lockdown planning: Quick ruck ball sessions, we focused on applying pressure on the defence. Now, let's plan for the other side of the ball. France's defence coach, Shaun Edwards says that it is his main metric for success: slowing down ruck possession. To enhance learning, you are better off focusing on an “arc” of learning for a specific area. This means spreading out the training over a number of weeks, rather than dedicating one session to this. MORE
