The clearance pass

What you tell your players the session is about:

1. Passing the ball away from a ruck or maul.
2. Understanding how team mates pass from a ruck and maul, thus aiding players’ timing and continuity.

What you tell your players to do:

1. Improve your passing ability and decision making from rucks and mauls and learn your capabilities.
2. Choose options based on the attacking players who are available to pass to.

What you get your players to do:

Set out four cones (lettered A, B, C, D), with the first two cones alongside each other and about 10m apart. Place the next cone forward about 3m and the final cone a further 3m ahead.

Starting at cone A with a ball on the floor, one player (P1) makes a long spin pass to another (P2), who puts the ball down at cone B.

P1 runs to cone B and pops the ball to another player (P3) who runs to and puts the ball down at cone C.

At cone C, P1 then pops or flicks the ball to P2 who is running from behind P1. He runs to cone D, goes to the ground the wrong way. P1 has to pick out the ball and then dive pass to P3.

Developing the session

The training session can be developed as follows:

1. Have the players pass in both directions (especially the long ones).
2. Make the receivers call for the type of pass they want.
3. Add defenders who might either pressurise the acting scrum half or the receivers.

Game situation

The session can be developed by playing an overload game, with two more players on the attack team.

Play the game in a smaller area than normal before expanding the pitch once the players have got the hang of it. Have two non specialists scrum halves in the attack team. Only these players can pick up the ball from a ruck or maul, to “pick and go” or pass.

Don’t allow scrums or lineouts. Restart the game by throwing the ball to the attack team.