Maul : Head inside ball inside , Shoulders on butts . ; i.e. when joining the maul put your head on the inside of a players butt not on the outside and therefore making the maul too wide and not having enough drive .
Ruck : Planes taking off in terms of body position ( talk to them about a good body position not just a good body height ) entering rucks...arms and hands up , head up ..i.e wide and strong not narrow and going down..no planes landing.
Scrum : Get the prop to touch the ground with his outside hand to get good body height before engaging
Lineout : Our front lifters er sorry supporters are lifting on the front of the thighs and even sometimes on just the leg closest to the oppn..hence the taping of the thighs of all potential jumpers down here in oz.
Defense : Up and out ...we use the word up to come off the defensive line and come forward to the oppn ..so the sequence is break , up and then using the team mates name that you are inside to give him the confidence to keep going out in defense because you are inside him , and keep talking all the way to the contact point and then start talking again about where the ball is and won or lost and then the whole sequence starts over again...see the library defense files for more.
Communication : give team mates informationnot just Yep or Yes ie close left wide right not there etc.. he most important person for this is the original ballcarrier who has/had the ball or our original tackler/contact person...we need info like on me , ball lost ,break , they have the ball , and one of the most useful is relaying what the ref is saying to your team mates in the ruck situation ie if the ref says thats a ruck let it go greendont just watch your teammate get penalised , tell him , using his name of course .
Tell your players to Participate not spectate at all times ie even when standing still they can still give information to teamates and participate in the game. In fact all my drills are now set up to facilitate participation not spectation and I will talk more about that next time.
LINEOUTS
...we were going to far across the line-out, and our jumpers weren't going straight up enough.
There were several things that we should do:
1) beat the opposition with foot movement, and then jump straight up, to get the maximum height from the lifters
2) Get your player standing at 1 to get as big a gap as possible, and to actively involve the ref with this to show him you are trying to help. Then get everyone else to stand an extra 1/2 yard out.
3) Throw the ball straight, but along the line of your jumpers, this will make it very hard for the opposition to get near the ball, but won't get blown up by the ref.
4) Don't jump across, this puts you closer to the opposition, and therefor easier to spoil.
5) practice until the timing with the hooker is perfect.
We were also taught a good drill to practise the perfect lifting techinque.
1) Get 4 lifters and 2 jumpers.
2) Get the jumpers to stand facing each other, and the lifters as they would be in a line-out (one either side of each jumper).
3) Give jumper number 1 a ball, and then lift him. Hold him at the top of his jump until jumper number 2 has been lifted, jumper number 1 then passes him the ball and returns to the floor, jumper number 2 is held at the top of his jump until jumper number 1 is lifted again, and then the ball is passed back, keep doing this until you can do 20 passes without an error.When you can do 20, your lifting ability is pretty good.
Modern defense, just like attack, is a multiple phase effort. The first job of defenders is to slow down and stall the attack. Once the attackers are forced to deal with static ball and well-organized defenders, it is possible to launch defenses which aim to poach possession of the ball.
The ruck, in fact, is a method of returning the ball to play. It is during the tackle that highly skilled defenders have an opportunity to dominate the tackler and compete for the ball. I understand that this happens too fast for some people to see, but it is real, and it is a very fascinating part of the modern game.These are the keys to success of pressure in defence:
Deny the opposition space to act and time to think. Close down the space between you fast to force errors by the ball carrier Tackle your opponents as far behind the gain line as possible. Attempt to drive your opponents backward in the tackle and dislodge the ball to reclaim possession. Attack the ball carrier; disrupt and halt opposition's attempts to retain and recycle the ball in rucks and mauls. Slow the ball down until you recover possession. Organise your defence to cover all possible attacking tactics by recovering your defensive positions quickly. Attack your opposition at scrum, line-out, ruck and maul to make it difficult for them to use good, controlled ball. Be hungry to reclaim the ball, and hunt for it in numbers.
...the Scottish packs at that level shout 1,2,3,4,5! when the ball comes in to a scrum. Why? It focuses the back row to push, says Campbell. What? Well, we think of the second row being made up of four players - the two second rows and the two wing-forwards. So there's a front row and a middle four. They push for the count. We have also changed our binding with the hooker in front of the props' shoulders, which makes the scrum much squarer as he sits well forward. And we think of the scrum as having separate right and left sides, which operate independently, with each prop having his own pair of second rows.
8 9
As to coaching the binding of the #8 on the side of the scrum as opposed to the back, I instructed my players to do this as a way to get the ball out quickly.
As a smaller scrum, the ability to get the ball out quickly was necessary to prevent the scrum from getting pushed around and pushed off of their own put ins.; The down side of this is that the ball is often delivered with much less control.
Well practiced, this can be a powerful tool, the opposing scrum is pushing when the ball is long gone, and so are the loose forwards.
The scrum half question is very interesting. At the clinic it was mentioned that by putting the scrum half in a position to pressure the FH. However a quick review of the 1997-1998 laws (Law 24 B (3)) indicates the SH must stay on the same side of the scrum as his opposition and must not move away from the scrum.
This does mean that the SH is in great position to kill any weak side attacks. As a side note I did not see many SH's spoiled by pressure from his opposition, all it takes is a little step by the #8 In attack, I pack the #8 over whenever we strike for Channel 1 ball.
This gets the ball to the #8's feet quickly and ensures that it doesn't scoot out past the Flanker. In the old days we used to have the Flanker control it, but today he needs to be driving on the Loosehead and splayed-out to hinder the opposition #9. So, packing the #8 over is good whenever we want a quick attack off the base of the scrum or when we are the weaker pack and need to get the ball out quickly (rather than take the time to control the ball down Channel 2 while being pushed around the paddock). Whenever we run a back row move I design it to start from #8 packed over.
If the attacking lefthand side is the short side, the half back (with flanker)look after any running attacks, and the winger drops back into the box (so as to take care of attacking kicks).
An option our club uses when the opposition have a large blind-side is to stand the scrum-half on the blind side, level with the No.8's feet. This helps nullify any blind-side moves by the opposing back row. The other option when the No.8 picks up and goes down the blind side is for our SH to tail his opposite number around the scrum