Saracens ball
Lucy Brown, Player development centre lead for RGC,shares one of her favourite games to get players finding space in attack
This activity will challenge your team to move forward and find space in attack. It also gets the defending players working hard to move forward and shut down the attack.
It limits the amount of touch tackles the attacking team have in the two halves of the pitch.
Here’s how the game works:
Mark out a playing area and put a halfway line across it
Play with touch rugby rules
The attacking team must get beyond the halfway line in 3 touch-tackles or less
If they don’t, the ball is turned over to the other team.
If the attacking team get into the opposition half, they have 6 touch-tackles to try and score.
If they don’t score in 6 touch-tackles, the ball is turned over to the other team.
This game helps motivate the defending team because they have a halfway line and limited touch tackles to aim for.
Splitting the pitch, helps the defenders contain the attackers by giving them smaller goals (i.e contain to the halfway line for 3 touch tackles), rather than just keep defending endlessly.
The attacking team have to be creative. They must work hard to find space to move the ball into. Due to the limited amount of touch tackles, they can’t keep running the ball into defenders.
Instead they can try kicking to move the ball up the pitch or passing under pressure just before the defender touches them to create space.
There are a number of ways you can cater this game to your team’s level.
If your team need an easier level, you can reduce the number of touch-tackles:
Try giving the attacking team three touch-tackles in their own half and five in the opposition half.
If your team is struggling with the limited touch-tackles you can adapt the rules further.
Try giving the attacking team unlimited touch-tackles in their own half. Once they progress over the halfway line, they must score in eight touch-tackles or less.
If your players need an extra challenge, try this game adaptions to increase the level of difficulty:
Add a constraint to the defending team: defenders must run to their own tryline and back after making a touch-tackle. This will give the defenders more space to try and cover.
Add a constraint to the attackers: a player can’t pass back to the player they received the ball from.
This gets the attacking team working hard in support and communicating. It also enables everyone to get more time on the ball, as the team has to vary who receives the pass.
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