What to do on rainy days
It's getting to the rainy months of the year in the UK. Here's some ideas for when your pitches might be unplayable.
It will happen at least once a year, certainly in Yorkshire, where I currently coach. Waterlogged pitches will mean a change in approach to training. We’re fortunate to have a 3G pitch, but it can often be in high demand with club teams and external hires. This means, on occasion, we might have to approach training differently.
I’ve run indoor sessions with a few teams. I’ve varied the content depending on where the teams are and the players that attend, just like any other training session. An indoor session offers the chance to do more interactive and in-depth law explanations and team building.
Here are a few ideas:
Open forum: Ask the players to think of some questions to bring. These can be anything rugby related, laws of the game etc. Bring a few videos prepared based on what you think the players might ask. You can also get players to demo for you. I’ve done this with explaining when the ball is out of the ruck.
Team building: These can be different activities. One of my favourite ones is the human knot. You can also do team building exercises in the summer, but they work great for getting players off their seats in an indoor session.
Bingo: Set up six tasks for players to complete. The first player to complete the tasks wins. These tasks could be set around finding out information and chatting to teammates. For example: Find a player who owned a pet other than a dog and a cat, find a player who’s middle name starts with A or J.
Who am I?: Organise players into pairs. Give each player a sticky note. They write a rugby law or playing position, and put it on their partner’s forehead. Their partner has to guess what they are, asking asking only yes/no questions.
Review footage: Give players a chance to look at footage, 10 mins to review in groups and then ask them to present to the group what they spotted. The review should be focused around positives (as it’s easy to go instantly to improvements or frame things negatively). If you don’t have access to your own footage, find some matchday highlights or footage online from the latest pro match (Red Roses for example) and get players to go through the match as if it was their own.
Board games: Get players to bring board games to play. If you don’t want to remove the rugby content, you can add it in. For example, add in rugby questions into quiz based games like Trivial Pursuit.
Pictionary: Split players into two teams. For this, you’ll need a large whiteboard and some dry erase pens. One player from each team comes to the board. Players are given the same rugby term to draw. The team to guess the term first wins. You can give players laws, actions, playing positions or team calls to draw.
Strike moves: Get players to design different strike moves. These could be off a line out or scrum. Get them to present them to the team, you could have a walkthrough of the idea if you have room.
These are some ideas from me, including ones I’m planning for this season and activities I’ve done in previous seasons. The important thing is to tailor them to your team and to know your team.