Rugby Coach Session Planning

The combination of fitness, skill development and decision-making creates the complementary elements that intensify the practice.

To develop fitness the progression during a season will be from aerobic fitness and flexibility to strength and speed and finally to anaerobic fitness and power.

Each of these will impact on the composure of the player, the ability to accurately perform the skills and to make decisions.

Fatigue does make cowards of us all and the link between the ability to succeed in the other two components and levels of fitness cannot be over-emphasised.

The intensification of skills practice initially comes from performing the basic individual skills many, many times.

These must be performed over and over again with the intensity being accelerated by a number of factors.  The most common of these are:

• A reduction in the space available i.e. the performance of a skill in a smaller area with greater congestion created by the number of players performing the skill nearby or in the same space.  The most influential skills of the game, those that impact most on play, are those that are performed close to, if not in contact with, other players.
• A reduction in recovery time, so that players perform the skill with the progressive reduction in the time the player has to catch breath.
• An increase in the level of opposition from time and space being the only “opposition” to some opposition to match play i.e. full-on opposition, as you would have in a game.

Initially it may be necessary to have more attackers than defenders when practising attack and the reverse when practising defence. This builds confidence and allows options to be learned. Eventually the reverse may be used with the attack or defence being overloaded with greater numbers.  For most teams this is rare.  If this is done it is important to monitor the length of time “in overload” so that skill levels and accurate decision-making are maintained.

When intensifying attack care must be taken to regulate the level of opposition so that it enhances and does not erode decision-making in particular.

Whatever may be practiced in opposed training, the keys are to regulate the opposition to achieve the level of decision-making desired and secondly to convince the opposition that they are doing a vital job for the team by maintaining the intensity of the practice.  Reserves are often used as opposition but they can easily lose interest and need to be kept motivated.

This may be in attack when defence is practiced and the reverse when attack is being practised.  To let the opposition decrease or increase the intensity or at worst play outside the laws of the game is counterproductive. It may be that the play needs refereeing – other than the obvious this has the additional benefit of allowing the coaches to concentrate on the play.

Decision-making

Many decisions that are made in a game are done with great frequency e.g. who to tackle, when to pass, how to support, who to throw the ball to in a lineout, but many are not.  They occur too infrequently in a game for the level of success to improve, especially in the short term.

Examples of these are which attacking move to use, which defensive pattern to use should there be more than one to choose from, what form of attack to use, and whether to take a gap or find support. 

To meet the need of these less frequent, but more important decisions, situations must be created at practice that duplicate these decision-making scenarios, time and time again.  Initially, the recovery time can be longer to enable the player to be composed.  Once a high degree of proficiency is reached the recovery time can be reduced, increasing the intensity.

Secondly, because successful decision-making can be difficult to achieve immediately, and becomes frustrating, it can be better to practice it in small “bites” and to return to it often. This gives the players time to reflect so that the decisions are more accurate next time.

By far the most frequent decision players make is to decide on the individual skill they will use from the menu available to complement the action of team-mates.

The aim is therefore to increase the menu of skills and to create the player who can make the best choice and perform the skill without hesitation.

The key skill here is “handedness” or the ability to use both hands, both shoulders – the ability to use the less familiar side of the body as comfortably as the familiar side.  For most players this is the left, with the familiar side being the right.

At practice the coach has the one opportunity to ensure players practice their less familiar side – something they may not do themselves if not supervised.

Once the parts have been practiced and individuals brought together in mini-units of increasing size, the team will need to play to its patterns of play and ultimately to its tactics for the forth-coming match.  This is best achieved by linking the practice to field position and linking each aspect of play to the team’s options in that field position.