Preseason: Add to the Attack
Here's a range of ideas to boost your team's attack this preseason. You can put them together in one session or spread them out.
Following the article on adding elements to preseason so it doesn’t feel like ‘fitness, fitness, fitness’, here’s some activities that you can bring into a preseason training session to focus on attack. You can also use these activities all year round. I’ve listed them here because you can easily slot them into a preseason session. Rugby fitness is diverse, it’s important to stress this through a range of different activities. Attack-focused preseason training can help with this message through activities bearcrawl football and turn and burn,
I’ve focused on the principles of play: go forward, support, continuity and pressure. Each PoP has a technical station and a game station. Both stations add in fitness, but it’s less overt.
Build upon strong foundations by using Contact Confident activities in preseason and in the regular season. The programme contains examples such as bearcrawls and partner carries that are ideal for preseason technical or fitness stations.
Go Forward
Game station: Bearcrawl football
Bearcrawls are fundamental for skills across attack and defence, including: rucks, scrums and tackles. This game means that everyone bearcrawls and aims to score by rolling or throwing the ball in the opponent’s goal. The activity gets players looking to go forward in attack whilst working on some contact skills that will be valuable if they’re looking to get clean and quick ruck ball in attack
Technical station: 1v1
Exactly what you’d imagine. Split players into pairs. This is a rapid activity that takes place in a small playing area. One ball carrier versus one defender. The defender attempts to touch-tackle the player, with a two handed touch. The attacker aims to use their speed and footwork to get to the otherside to score. Limit the time between repetitions to increase the test of fitness.
Support
Game station: 2 touch
Play a game of touch rugby. The ball carrier can keep running after the first touch, but they cannot score. After the second touch they stop and pass. Challenge players to run in support after the first touch to allow the ball carrier to pass before they get touch tackled a second time and the rate of play slows down. Limit the number of players and have multiple game stations to stretch the support and fitness.
Technical station: Piggy in the middle
Set up a small circular playing area. Give the attacking team more players (3v2, 4v3). The attackers attempt to pass between each other without the pass being intercepted or touched. If the ball is touched by a defender, the person who threw the ball and the defender swap. Players can run with the ball and pass in any direction. However, the pass cannot be shorter than 1m and the players can’t pass back to the person who passed them the ball.
Continuity
Game station: Offloading hugby
Hugby is where players play a game of rugby, but instead of it being a full tackle a defending player aims to wrap a ball carrier. This can help players work on their tracking and wrap in defence, it’s also helpful to still work on contact principles without players going to ground if the ground is firm due to the Summer heat. Focus on attacking principles by adding in an offload rule. If the ball carrier is wrapped, they must stop, if there is a support player there within 3 seconds the ball carrier can offload. If there is no support player, the ball gets rolled through the legs similar to rugby league.
Technical station: Fall, present and pop
Split players into small teams (3v3 or 4v4). If the ball carrier is touch tackled, they must fall to the floor, move to present the ball or pop the ball to a teammate. If they’ve presented the ball, the next person acts as scrumhalf to play the ball. This gets the players working on falling correctly, presenting the ball or popping the ball to a teammate to keep the ball alive.
Pressure
Game station: Turn and burn
Play a game of touch rugby (adapt the rules depending on your team). Add a turn and burn. As soon as the try is scored, the attackers retain possession and now look to attack the other tryline. The keeps the intensity and pace of the game high, as well as applying pressure to the defence.
Technical station: Kick chase
Although a kick chase would also fall under a defensive session as well. The focus here is on regaining the ball to score. Split players into small groups (4v4, 3v3). The attackers must score via a kick. The players or coaches can choose what type of kick (depending on what kick you want to focus on). The game is fast. Limit the time between repetitions to speed it up. Give the attackers a time limit to get as many scores as they can before swapping attackers and defenders.
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