I just finished reading another excellent analytical article by Scott Allen over at the Green and Gold Rugby blog. In it he looks at attacking patterns utilized by Wales, the All Blacks and the Wallabies and addresses the strengths and limitations of their various approaches to the game. It’s a brilliant article, with an accompanying narrated video, and I suggest everyone read / watch it to gain a sense of what people are doing at the top end of the game.
Wallaby Attack Patterns by Scott Allen
Scott also uses quotes from former Wallabies coach Eddie Jones and player David Campese to demonstrate the two extremes with regard to employing attacking patterns. Jones argues that players need less to think about and so should have drilled into them patterns of play that give them greater focus. Campese feels that coaches adopting such prescriptive strategies are taking away from players their ability to read and direct a game based upon what they see in front of them.
Allen places these two men at polar opposites of this debate, and I have to say that I lean more toward the Campese side of the argument where amateur rugby is concerned. I can see the benefit of providing structures that everyone can follow which play to their strengths, establishing consistency and efficient execution in attack. There are several factors to consider when deciding to adopt structures, but I think the most important are time and commitment. If you are in a short school / summer season – as we have in Canada – do you have time to implement this plan of attack and have all players on the same page by the team playoffs roll around? If the strategy is vastly different from what your players are used to, are you going to risk unnecessary confusion – which may result in vital losses and risk your playoff hopes altogether? Do you even have full commitment to your training sessions such that everyone gets sufficient time to learn and adopt these structures?
I’d say that school and university teams here have a better opportunity to fully adopt structured play given that they tend to train most weekdays, if not every. Students do have other commitments, however, and I’m always worried that if a few people miss out on key sessions that they could be the proverbial monkeywrench in the otherwise well-oiled machine. This is definitely an issue with club rugby as only once in my 14 years have I ever coached a club side that could consistently have its starting XV show up to important pre-game team-focused practices (needless to say, they were the most successful club side I’ve coached!) . In my opinion, it can be a colossal waste of effort and time to be too rigid with one’s attacking structures only to have them disrupted or not adhered to by the players who aren’t familiar with it (which I feel was a factor leading to one of my most disappointing losses, something I should have taking greater care to correct). One can send out a ‘play book’ electronically, but most athletes tend to be kinaesthetic learners and as such need to run through new things several times physically.
So what is there to do? I discussed a very simple strategy of Playing to the Principles of the game in a previous article. Simply put, if you players know how to attack space, call for and pass the ball, how to support each other in the loose and retain possession, you can play effective rugby! These are things that can be worked on by any number of players and which even high level professionals continue to work on and develop, in both basic technique and highly dynamic situations. For me, the vast majority of a training session consists of developing tools, vision, understanding, and communication when employing those basic techniques and tactics and adhering to a simple set of principles.
Reaching a point where everyone can be comfortable playing what some call “heads up” rugby can take a while, however. It can depend as much on the coach’s ability to transfer knowledge and facilitate understanding as it does players’ abilities to adopt and employ it. I continually work at it, and aim to get my team to a point where our plan of attack includes little structure and a lot of freedom. Early in the season, or especially with a newer group of players, it’s probably safer to flip that with lots of structure and not much freedom. I’d challenge coaches though to move away from that as soon as possible, removing the scaffolding little by little and constantly challenging ALL players (not just decision makers) to read and understand the realities of the game such that they can make decisions on their own.
For example: Using a wide-wide, pattern from a lineout should allow an attacking team to run against slower / unfit forwards when they get to the other side of the pitch and reverse the direction, if played quickly. BUT … sometimes teams know this a limitation for them so the tight five players will immediately push themselves wide to cover the initial wide attack threat and give their backs a chance to flip around for the reverse phases. This can leave a gaping hole or opportunity to catch defenders in poor positions in the channel where the lineout took place. Teams at the levels I’ve coached at rarely try scan the field for such opportunities, following fairly predictable patterns of play or having random goes at the defence with no clear purpose whatsoever. In the above situation, a fast and powerful forward or flighty wing / scrum half could really cause havoc down that narrow ‘lineout’ channel if allowed to chance it and have a go.
I think, as I often say in this blog, the key is to actually PLAY RUGBY at training. Give your players the chance to see these things unfold in a game situation before they actually have to play a game. If you don’t have the numbers to run relatively even numbers against one another, then create conditioned scenarios that mimic real aspects of the game or use tackle bags, etc. as stand-ins. (When I coached a team that only had about 10 ever shot to training, we used bags as post-guard defence dummies around theoretical rucks. These became no-go areas in training and it resulted in us playing a much wider game which played to our smaller, faster attributes. You could flip that if you have a forward dominant team, focusing on breaching the narrow channel quickly and spinning wide only when they’ve disrupted the defensive line.) Let your players know that you will ask them what they saw in front of then and that you’ll ask them to justify their decisions. Importantly, this must be done in an environment where they will not be criticised but supported or sympathetically guided in their decision making and explanations for their actions. Try not to give answers, but work through the ‘teachable moment’ with Socratic questioning.
The worst aspect of rigid patterns is watching a game and seeing players plug away at what they were told to do, missing clear and easy opportunities to gain ground or score. I’d also hope that turning over initiative to the players makes the game more fun for them, giving them a sense that they really did create opportunities rather than have the coach on the sidelines tell them what to do. For players who are striving for higher levels of play, this is the sort of development they need most – going beyond the basics and leaving the script aside to truly understand the game that’s being played in front of them, developing rugby smarts and tactical awareness regardless of position.
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