Martin's Rugby Coaching Forum

Hi,

My Under 8's do run with the ball and pass, however, they stop supporting once one of them broke through. This means against the better teams we are left with a situation where the ball carrier has no support and we loose the ball.

What to do?


P

Dear RugbyFan,

First, the tactical perspective...

In your teams agegroup you would be playing with two "families". The first family consists of the ball carrier and those 3-4 players inmediately around him. THe others are in the second family and should look for - and position into the space. Working with these families will give your team a reference.
The first family has the task to penetrate the defence, if this is not possible they should play the ball to the second family. A good skill to penetrate is to off-load in the tackle. The support players should position in a diamond shape: left, right and behind in the axis.

Your problem seem to be that once there has been a breakthrough the supporting players do not re-align into the diamond and stop supporting altogether.
The ball-carrier gets tackled by a defender running back without his support.

My advise would be to focus the team on keeping the diamond shape, recognising the support role just as vital as the player carrying the ball and possible scoring.
Encourage this by shouting "Great try XYZ,good support running ABC - you could have made that try too!"


How to train this? The learning environment should reflect the re-aligning after the initial offload. I use a 4 vs 1+1+1 exercise. The four attackers in the diamond and one defender who can only move latterly. After the ball has been offloaded the four can attack the next defender but everybode has to re-position to get into the diamond shape again. Use the "Photo" to improve tactical thinking.

Final step is you thinking where to start these additional defenders, from the side? Simulate the game environment more.

Hope this helps,

Martin

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Martin, Rugbyhead