Flip the cones: A new game to try
A new game from Russell Earnshaw and me
A few weeks ago, Russell Earnshaw, gave me a game to try:
Set up a playing area and overturn some cones on both trylines.
Teams aim to score on the cones.
If they score on the cone, it gets overturned.
First time to overturn all their cones wins.
The game intentions, from Rusty:
“My intention with this game is for attacks to manipulate defences and defences to dictate.”
I loved the game idea and knew it would work with my team. I imagined the team getting down to the last few cones and having to work hard to create space or close it down.
The team were in the middle of a defensive block, primarily looking at blitz. I started to think about modifying the game to work with the team’s current aims.
(I also needed to modify the overturned cones, because in windy Yorkshire I’d end the game with no cones left!)
So, here is my version:
Flip the cones over: blitz the line
Set up a playing area, white cones are ideal
Place a different coloured cone over some of the cones on each tryline
Teams can score anywhere on the tryline.
If they score on a coloured cone, they retain possession.
If they score on a white cone, the ball is turned over to the opposition.
If the scoring team retain possession, they take the ball back to their tryline.
As soon as the ball carrier, touches their tryline the defending team can start their defence and press up to the attackers.
After trialling this version of the game, there wouldn’t be anything I would tweak for my team. Before introducing this game to them in the session, I used a warm up game that had teams scoring on cones and if they scored on a certain cone they retained possession.
This introduced the concept in a familiar game, before trialling out the new game whilst also implementing the blitz defence (which is an ongoing focus).
Massive ongoing thank you to Rusty for continuing to help stoke the fires of my coaching.