Defence decision-making activities

The basis for good defence always starts with strong tackling. However, the defenders also need to be connected as a group to ensure that the attacking options are closed down.

Here are some defensive activities that you can run in training, even if you are not allowed to use tackling. All of them require good connections and decision-making. The attacking group will want to "win" and score, so the defensive group has to find creative ways to stop them.

A challenging activity to start with: Creative defence to shut down options puts defenders in different starting points to discover different angles to prevent the overloaded attack winning.

One of my favourite exercises, Slide and hammer defence gives defenders opportunities to explore both a drift (slide) and a blitz (hammer) defence.

Defend in threes and fours is another overloaded attack activity. The defenders are working hard to realign to cover all the potential attacking options.

Finally, Overlap cover looks at a common problem when a defence finds themselves having to chase across to defend space.