Creative defence

Challenge defenders to work in pairs but from different starting angles and distances from the attack. They will have to make decisions about whether to “manage” the attack by drifting or to close it down before it can spread the ball wide.

Warm up time: 5-7
Session time: 8-10
Development time: 10-15
Game time: 10-15
Warm down time: 5-8

What to think about

This is a simple session to set up but the decisions to be made are quite sophisticated. Run at full pace and use contact to get the most benefit. Therefore, it is a good session-ender and can be used as a fitness/ conditioning session with a couple of boxes working at once. Make it a real competition for the attack to cross the end line. For instance, see how many consecutive, successful attack attempts can be made. Keep the time between attempts limited, so players have to recover quickly and keep their concentration levels up. The session challenges players to decide who to tackle and what sort of tackle to use. The closer defence is to attack, the more chance they can use “aggressive” tackles to drive the attack back. If the attack has more of a run-up, then soak-up tackles are better.

set-up

1. Identify who you are defending and how: Inside man calls the “drift”, the outside man the “blitz”.
2. Close down the space if you can in defence but don’t get drawn into the tackle too early.

What you get your players to do

Put two defenders inside one half of a 20m x 10m box and three attackers at one end with a feeder to the side. Shout out to the defenders which line (“5m” or “10m”) and which cones to start from (see pictures 1 and 2). Then release the attack. Playing full contact, the defence has to prevent the attack getting to the try line. Give defenders three goes before swapping.