News Every Day | 27 April 2024, 21:50

Intervention!

How to give technical development a tactical context (and make training more fun)

Training an Under 16 Team

I was invited to help out with a club’s under 16 team recently and made some interesting changes to their plans that worked out very nicely!

Examples

The team was working hard in a 3 v 3 drill and the focus was very much on the running line of the player to get him the ball, creating a diversion with that third attacker. They would call the play before they would start running into the grid. It either worked out or did not, and when it did not, it all stopped. I saw players getting frustrated because the attackers did not manage to break the line much.

Step in #1

I asked if I could make some modifications to the exercise. This is what I did:

Created a tryline, and told the team “It ends when we score here”;
Told the team that if the pass was not on, then to go for duel and if that was not on, go for contact;
And that those two runners had then to converge to the ball carrier and either receive the pop or work on recycling the ball;

Suddenly the whole feel of the exercise changed, it felt like it was more “us three are doing this, not just the Ball Carrier”, those support runners had to adjust, react and, what I liked, they wanted to end with that score.

Step in #2

On to the next exercise: some tackle drills. The first was very technical with a 1v1’s scattered over the pitch, the attacker not even carrying a ball. But they started very close and the tackles were super low! The next tackle drill was tackle 1v1 with a ball, set-up in a grid system. After 5 minutes I changed this as follows:

Made it a 2v2;
Asked the defenders to tackle inside out, creating a tackle zone on their outside shoulder;
Allowed only the outside attacker to cut inside;
Asked to attackers to finish with scoring a try;

This started off very slowly, it was not very clear what the role of that inside defender was, lots of discussion when I did a walk-through. But the “Up-and-Out” stuck and it got really going, the designated tackler giving the open side and trusting his inside tackler.

The training already gained more momentum (I like to think) and the team moved into a contested End Game. Earlier in the season we had talked about feeding a second ball to get beyond the technical mistakes, but is was very difficult for the trainer who seem to randomly throw the next ball onto the pitch. Quick guidelines were:

You can feed the next ball as if you were a player continuing play;
Or feed it with a slow recycle from the back of the ruck;
Or next to the ruck and block the first defender to simulate a Pick-and-Go like break:

I loved how the trainer was very eager to try implementing this new advice! Of course play speeded up enormously!

What happened?

In that first exercise, the timing of the pass / running line exercise was still the goal, but now there was plan B and plan C. Players had to make an effort to keep the ball alive. I had given the exercise a rugby game or tactical context.
Same with that second tackle exercise, it shifted from 1v1 with ball to a game related Tackle in Open Play context.
Lastly, the feeding of the second ball in the End Game made it all so much more dynamic and fluid.

Tactical training approach for rugby

This approach questions the beliefs that the four aspects of technical, tactical, physical and mental are equally important and have to be trained separately. But since tactical is dominating factor in our rugby sport, this approach prioritises tactical principles above the others:

In order to prepare players for the match, the practises have to look like match situations

But then the challenge is to make technical, physical and mental aspects part of the exercises too. Enter, Pierre Villepreux and his LPM crew who got his totally sorted! Learn how to mix those four elements with their philosophy.

Language is important too

In a discussion with my friend Paul he mentioned that language is important too. We should take every opportunity to give our conversations a tactical context like “In Open Play, when we are playing in the defense, it is important to …”. This is also the type of encouragement you can shout running the exercises: “Search!”, “Look for Space!”, “Make the Wall”.