Using individual rules in a team game
Tailor your coaching to each teammember. Use this idea to give players solo challenges in a larger game.
A simultaneous joy and challenge of grassroots coaching is that no session is the same or predictable. That often means planning games or activities that can be flexible or easily adapted depending on who’s at training and how they’re feeling.
Having a game where you can tweak the rules to challenge the players that are at training means you can set the right level for the individuals. At training this week for a team I coach, I set different rules for each player. This meant I could tailor each rule to a player’s strength or what they wanted to work on.
Giving players individual rules means you can support or challenge them. Using the game to help players develop but not in a one size fits all approach. I used this method in training this week to give players rules around how to play the ball. This game stretches the attacking team’s support.
Here’s what I did and how you can try something similar in your sessions:
Run a game of touch
Players stop and pass when they’ve been touched by a defender
Pause the game and give each player a different action to do after they’ve been touched by a defender
These could be:
Stop and pass
2 touch rugby (after the first touch keep running but cannot score on the second touch stop and pass)
Present the ball on the floor, a member of the same team acts as scrumhalf but no ruck
Stop and offload (the player must pass the ball one handed to a teammate close to them)
Stop and pass for their first two touches. Every third time the player is touched with the ball they must kick
You can adjust the level of contact for your players. For my session we stayed at a low level of contact to work on other skills.
However you could:
Introduce having one supporting attacker in the ruck
Have a 1v1 contested ruck
One purpose behind this game was to develop different ways of moving the ball and working on the different types of support needed. However, it also enables coaches to individualise their coaching.
You can tailor these rules to the players. Players don’t come to us isolated from the outside world, some weeks they will relish an extra challenge, other weeks they may want something simplier.
Knowing your players is key to the success of giving them these rules. You can always ask the players what level of rule they would like. This let’s them tell you how much of a challenge they would like at the session.
Level 1 rules might feature the stop and pass or presenting the ball. Level 2 could have the offload or 2 touch. Level 3 might include the 3rd touch kick rule. However, how you view the difficulty of each rule depends on the level of your team and each player’s strengths.
Giving players individual rules helps your coaching and sessions be tailored to them and their specific needs. This helps them feel supported, nurtured and suitably challenged.