The marker defense is a major defensive play in Rugby League but is being incorporated( in a style) by many of the worlds top Union countries who are now employing "Defense Coaches" with most coming from a League back ground. England and Phil Larder as a good example. However, you can use a lot of their ideas as well.

You have to understand the RL concept before you can make the transfer to RU.

In RL there a many variations of Marker Defense that occur at the tackle.Two players are allowed at the "play the ball" but the must be standing square to the play, directly in front of the play the ball with one man directly behind the front man.

Once the attacker has played the ball the second MARKER chases the ball whilst the first marker remains at the play the ball area guarding any dummy from the acting half back and the defending the area directly in front of the play the ball.

Once the ball has been passed from the 1st receiver the chasing defender has done his job as the rest of the defensive line should have moved up into the attacking line. The chaser then falls into the defensive line covering the inside ball.

Another concept is the right and left split with the front man breaking to cover the attack left and the back man breaking to cover the attack right,. This can cause problems if the acting half back throws a dummy and attacks through the middle or the hole left by the markers splitting. This covered by the defensive line directly behind the marker defence but the acting half back has made the break into open play and will make the gain line before being tackled,

The marker defense or Pillar defense being used in rugby union is very similar to the first example of the league defense except three players are involved of the ruck. Player one stands on the edge of the ruck player two chases the ball once it is moved from the ruck area and player three standing wide of the ruck angles into the attack to turn the play back into the ruck area stopping the ball being spread.

Defensive players can also place themselves in the position on the field to dictate to the ball carrier where he wants him to go.

• Standing wide of the attacker and defending in a inward angle places the ball carrier into playing back inside.
• Standing inside the attacker and defending in an outward angle pushes the ball carrier to a wider position on the field.

Material from RL website
Here is some reading from an aussie point of view towards league defence. I copied this from a RL forum.

Question: Could you give me some advice on defence?

Defence being such a broad area. I am mainly looking at styles, which is the best style to use.

• Sweeper defense
• Slide (or up & out) defence
• Man-on-man
• Zone

Sweeper
The use of a sweeping player to cover. I used a sliding defensive pattern this year and for some reason our defensive out wide was brittle. I didn't use a sweeper this year and I think we suffered because of that.

slide (or up & out) defence
With slide (or up & out) defence it is a very reactive type of defence, meaning that you are reacting to what the opposition are doing.

This means also that you will be giving away metres whenever the attack goes wide. This is where the main area of "sliding" is used & must also be the place where your edge defenders are most decisive.

Being decisive means that the defenders are positive about who their target is, as this builds defensive confidence.

A few points about "up & out" may help you & your team become more confident.

First rule about any defence - go forward before you angle & get off the line with speed until a couple of metres before contact then tempo run to
gain balance before the drop & drive.

Edge defenders should be nominating (with a direct finger point) their target - this makes the individual more sure about who he has & his team mates also understand who he has so that they know who they have.

Understand that with "slide" you must explain to your team whether you are marking up man-on-man or in a zone formation.

Man-on-man
Man-on-man is self explanatory but with zone you must know whether you are leaving one, two, or more attackers unmarked on your edges (depending upon the compression of your defensive line).

Zone
Zone can also mean grids on the field must be used to control the width of a defence line.

An example of this would be that if the attack has the ball running at your third man in on your left hand side of the defence then your right winger should be standing inside the 20m line on his side & slightly behind his centre partner.

This is the zone he needs to be inside when the ball is on the other side of the field.

Conversly, the winger on the side being attacked will be playing man-on-man with his alignment being his outside shoulder aligned with his opposite wingers' inside shoulder.

Now the trick is when the ball is spread back toward the winger who has numbers outside him.

Firstly, numbering up on players directly in front of you is the way to go.

As the ball is passed across the field the defence moves straight up to cut off the ball (if possible) but once the ball gets past a defender he then slides across on the inside shoulder of an attacker.

The further the ball goes out the more defenders change their target from a certain attacker to a new attacker until the ball reaches the third attacker in; often when this is occurring the defence line is slding away from the attack (in a funnelling effect toward the sideline) until the defence can get into a man-on-man situation.

When the ball gets to your third man in then knows that the zone is over & man-on-man begins, it's time to go straight to your target on shut him down.

A couple fo tips for slide - when sliding across field inside defenders should always stay an even distance away from each other(shut the gate for
each other).

Keep a good metre away from the attack when sliding - get in too close & you could become entangled with them & possibly miss a tackle or not be in position to get a good shot on.

Always keep attackers on one side of your body when sliding so that you can dictate to them where you want them to go.

This is just a quick run down on one type of pattern & trust me there are plenty of others.

think that I would be tempted to use an up and in system or an umbella shaped defence in an attempt to snuff out the attack in the mid field, which you are saying is your strength.

I would advise that you spend more than 50 % of your training time working on defence, afterall we have the ball for 50% or less of the game and yet we tend to spend all our training time working on what we are going to do when we have the ball.

I am sure you know this but just incase, you line up outside your opponents outside shoulder.

Your running line is straight up and then in towards the ball carrier hopefully preventing them from passing to the outside them.

Likewise the umbrella defence, each player goes up slightly faster than the player inside him, but not to the extent that you create a gap for a runner to get through.

Again the aim is to prevent them getting the ball wide where your defence is weakest.

Tackling technique is essential, with the current laws I would spend time working on your tacklers freeing the ball without looking at it in contact so that we got the head and feed following the "Knock on."

Additional information
For more info:

• Rugbysmart website

last updated on 26-11-03