Rugby requires the mastery of many key skills and movements. Teaching these solely through the use of drills can easily lead to boredom and decreased motivation among players, so using different games to work on these skills can inject some freshness into training sessions.
Working Overlaps
This routine teaches players to use one of the most important tactical advantages in rugby; the overlap. Keep sides to small, uneven numbers--four on one side and three on the other is ideal. Use the entire width of the pitch, but keep the playing area short--even as short as a quarter of a pitch. The defending side, with the lesser number of players, has to prevent the attacking side from scoring, using hold tackles instead of full tackles. This should be impossible, but attackers often make numerical advantages overly complicated. Whenever the attacking team does score, move the scorer to the defending side and one defender to the attacking side, offering a constant rotation.
Touch Rugby
Touch rugby places players into a full-game situation without having to consider contact, so it is excellent for working on movement on and off the ball. To encourage expansive play, the game should be played on a pitch of normal width, but reduce the length to half a pitch to keep the game intense. Each side gets five touches to attempt to score a try. After those five touches are used up, possession is relinquished to the defending side. Touches are completed by two hands being placed on an opponent's torso, the only contact that is permitted. Using the full width of the pitch to work numerical advantages and making tactical changes in direction to fool opponents should be the focus of the game.
Kicks
Mark out two goals, made from two cones, about 20 meters apart from each other on opposing touchlines of a quarter of a pitch. One player stands at one end of the section, another at the opposing end. The aim of the game is to get in range of, and to kick the ball through, the goal defended by an opponent. Players can score through the air or along the ground. The game starts from the goal line, and as one opponent kicks, the other is allowed to catch the kick and return it from the mark of the catch (the distance is intentionally long to prevent a goal from being scored from each kick). However, dropping a catch or kicking the ball straight out of the game area results in the opponent receiving a free kick from the spot of the infringement. The first team to score 10 goals wins the game. This game is particularly good for teaching kicking and catching accuracy, along with strategies while under pressure.
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