Perfect kicks

Plenty of your players come to rugby with some kicking ability from sports like soccer and then, with practice, become efficient kickers of the rugby ball. Work on their specific technique so they can develop that natural ability into a repeatable, accurate skill under pressure.

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 session is ideal to give to players as “homework”. You can run the session and then the players can use elements of it when they are away from training. It should give the players purpose for kicking the ball. Learning or developing a kick from the weaker foot often acts as a way of improving the stronger foot. Because the player focuses in more detail on the techniques of the weaker foot, he can relax and use those techniques with the stronger foot. Though some players can kick well with both feet, it is a very rare commodity even at the top level.

set-up

1. Kick to a specific target.
2. The leg and foot follow through to that specific target.
3. Use both the strong and weak kicking foot.

What you get your players to do

Put cones at 5m intervals back from a set of goal posts (see picture 2). Get a kicker to start at the nearest cone and kick at the post. Concentrate on the foot following through to the target. When he has hit the post once, then he moves back to the next cone. He tries to get back as far as he can in 10 attempts.