THE SET PIECES



The scrum


THE SCRUM IS AN OFFENSIVE WEAPON


The scrum is a crucial component of rugby. Getting it right is certainly a key to rugby success, getting it wrong can result in disaster in terms of both the final score and the confidence of the team. There are many technical manuals about how the scrum should be executed - including, if I may be so bold, my own "GRASSROOTS RUGBY" - but to my knowledge there is very little published material on how to actually coach it, how to prepare the eight forwards and the scrum-half for the task.

The scrum makes major demands on the players' physique and considerable scrum preparation can be done by the players themselves working in the gym to strengthen their core and power muscles and to develop their anerobic and aerobic fitness. Core strength and stability is particularly important because absolute physical rigidity is a crucial component of the complex equation that needs to be solved in every scrum. Simply put then, turning up to training twice a week and hitting the scrum machine ten or twenty times is not adequate preparation if the intention is to use the scrum productively and aggressively.

Such physical preparation is not always possible, however. The benefits of weight training to most younger age-grade squads, U13s, U14s and many U15s in particular, is debatable, for example. Likewise, the players in many social rugby teams only have time available for limited training and the match at the weekend. Yet they will all be asked to scrum. As a result, coaches are often faced with packs having widely varying physical sizes, shapes, abilities and fitness that must, somehow, be moulded into a scrum.

Coaching the scrum

The coach will need to address the following factors:
- Safety
- Timing
- Technique

Scrum Safety
The physical stresses placed on players in the scrum are very severe -- particularly in the front row. It is thus crucial that players are physically capable of withstanding these stresses and have the technique to deal with them positively. The importance of this is demonstrated, for example, by the fact that the NZRFU has published guidelines which among other things require coaches to avoid placing young players with long necks in the front row. Making such a seemingly obvious requirement suggests that the NZRFU understands that specific knowledge of how the scrum operates is by no means widely available. It's is certainly worth checking with your national union for its safety guidelines or searching the internet for detailed safety information

The scrum is an inhospitable environment and a clear understanding of its mechanics is thus very important to all coaches. Since I've already plugged my own book/CD, "GRASSROOTS RUGBY", may I also particularly recommend the relevant section in Greenwood's book, Total Rugby, as a good starting point to build this understanding.

It's worth noting, too, that the scrum (like the tackle) is almost always the area which most disconcerts beginning players. Dumping beginners into the deep end, as it were, without adequate preparation is not only criminally irresponsible but virtually certain to guarantee that a considerable percentage of them will avoid all further contact with rugby.

Every scrum session at training should begin with a reminder on scrum safety - and not just for beginners either. All forwards need to be regularly reminded of their responsibilities in this area.

Scrum safety is founded on both physical and mental preparation and in the careful control of the beginning player's early experience. One approach to this process is for the coach to help every pack member to develop a personal pre-scrum check-list that, once it becomes second-nature, will ensure that he or she enters the scrum mentally and physically prepared. Such a check-list might cover foot placement, body alignment, shoulder and neck position and eye level to be followed before every contact. Correct targets must also be selected because it is important that the initial contact is made precisely -- both by the front row and the other players. Lurching blindly forward into the opposition or into your own man is a recipe for trouble.

Beginning players must also become aware of the consequences of their actions on others while the scrum is in effect. It is obvious that props who are tempted to drop the scrum must be aware that this would place possibly disasterous strain on their hooker and other prop as well as the opposing front row. In the same way an incorrectly angled shove by a lock or No. 8 can significantly affect the safety of the prop or lock he or she is pushing on. Thus, careful, detailed step-by-step coaching is necessary and making the effort to get each player 'right' in terms of e.g. body-position before the overall effect of the total scrum is considered is the key to this approach. Greenwood's scrum diagrams are absolutely spot-on in this regard. Clearly, coaches need to help players build a communication environment so that players can make their problems know without embarrasment.

Once players are 'right' responsibility falls on the scrum DM, usually but, as we'll see, not necessarily 3, to be sure that all of his players are fully prepared and aware before contact is made - players must be encouraged to sing out if they are not. This is important! Refs have an unpleasant habit of betraying their irritation with what they believe to be time-wasting as the scrum is being prepared but they MUST resist this and give the benefit of the doubt to the players. This goes double in age-grade matches.

Top of Page

Timing and Coordinated Action

In the scrum, timing IS everything.

The success or failure of the scrum is based on timing. To be successful the pack must carry out a series of actions absolutely in unison. This, needless to say, is the coaching challenge.

For example, as the ref finally says, "Engage!" the ENTIRE scrum must strike forward as a rigid whole.

To achieve this the following factors obviously need to have been settled well in advance:
Communication of the drive requirements -- to 'promote' the tight-head, to lock out, etc.
Communication of ensuing moves -- 8 pick-up, push-over etc. if it's going to be a forwards move or some indication of the backs attack zone if it isn't.
Body-position -- 'Cocked' i.e. shoulder position correct; core recruited; back straight or slightly concave; chin-up; knees bent just enough; feet correctly placed; arms properly bound.
Binds -- in place - rigidly.
Targets -- selected.
Trigger -- communicated.
All well and good; the entire pack is apparently clued in, 3 hears the ref's call, tightens his bind which triggers the action and the scrum drives forward.

Or not.

What happens if the open-side flanker is actually still worrying about the fact that he missed his man at the last breakdown and anyway his lace is undone, the blind-side flanker is concerned about that mud on his studs and/or the No. 8 is thinking about his assignment when the ball comes to him? Or maybe if one of the locks is simply day-dreaming and the other can't seem to settle his feet, the loose head prop is gearing himself up to arm wrestle the opposing tight-head and the hooker is contemplating whatever it is that hookers contemplate? 3 lurches forward effectively alone, the opposing pack smash forward and chaos rules.

Ludicrous? Unlikely? Far from it.

Disasters like this occur with monotonous regularity at every level of rugby - at elite level the reasons may be more sophisticated but they still happen.

The problem is that there is no sure-fire remedy. Players get tired. The whistle going defuses tension and there is something about the familiar routine of preparing for a scrum that seems to diminish awareness. All to often the result is that players become passive and simply go through the comfortable routine motions. Clearly, a mechanism needs to be found to grab the attention of the pack and focus it on the job at hand. The most likely way to do this is through individual initiative and leadership. Many clubs encourage individual Spirit Leaders - perhaps even prompted by the pack DM - to claim a scrum as their own and indeed there is something that summons up the blood about a flanker declaring, "This is my scrum. Who's with me?"
Which players have most stake in the scrum is an interesting question. On one level the hierarchy of value to the scrum might seem to be something like 3, 2, 1, 4 (the left lock), 8, 5 (the right lock), 6 and 7. However, in terms of stake in the scrum i.e. the players who have most to lose, the hierarchy is probably 1 and 3 jointly because they are on the pointed end, 5 because it is his or her shove and control that very largely energises both 3 and 2, 8 and 7 because it is their future actions that the scrum outcome controls and finally 2, 4 and 6. Many people believe that the 3, 5 and 7 triangle is, in fact, the most important unit in the scrum. This is all open to debate of course but coaches might consider formenting such a debate to encourage the development of a supportive 'scrum culture'.
(Interestingly however, it is often flankers who grasp this responsibility rather than players who have a larger stake in the success of the scrum. Props, hookers and locks, in particular, often seem strangely mute when it comes to the bit.) Once introduced, by the way, this approach should also be used in training - but of course it must be continually refreshed by the enthusiasm of the DM and the Spirit Leaders.

In attack, the pack is goint to have to make two forward movements in unison in every scrum and a third in some. The first, I call it the 'hit', takes place on the 'E' of "Engage",
the second, the 'shunt', a split second before the ball is put in and
the third, the 'drive' usually after the ball is safe at 8's feet.
The trigger for these shoves is a sudden tightening of binds initiated by the scrum leader. This communicates itself through the pack seamlessly. (Audibles simply don't work in these circumstances. ) Note that given proper preparation the scrum is already 'cocked' at this point, navels sucked in to recruit cores and body positions perfect, so the trigger event has immediate effect.

Needless to say this doesn't just come about by chance. Timing exercises are an absolute must. The simplest and in many ways the most vivid of these is to form the pack in a circle bound tightly and facing inward. The coach then gives the usual instructions, "Crouch," "Touch," "Hold," at which point the pack tightens its binds and bends its knees and "Engage" when it jumps off the ground. The first few times this is done will provide a graphic demonstration of the pack's state of preparation - or lack of it! - and provide the coach with an opportunity to make his coaching points. Once the entire pack is jumping more or less in unison stop the calls and allow the pack leader to trigger the jump with a sudden bind-tightening. Before long the pack will start to focus on the trigger details - waiting for the inhalation that signals knees bent and the tightening that triggers the jump. Perfection won't be achieved in one session but if the drill is used before every scrum session improvement will soon be obvious.

In defence the shove will need to be triggered by different events - the hit will be the same but the shunt is probably best triggered by the movement of the attacking hooker's right foot and the drive by the breathing of the opposition. They'll certainly inhale immediately before they move and exhale in the movement.

Top of Page

Scrum Technique

Objectives: One of the problems with coaching the scrum, especially when using the scrum-machine, is to know when it's right. By this I mean when all binds are secure and rigid, all feet are in the best possible position and all the players are perfectly in tune timing-wise. The problem is that there is so much to check and you can't possibly look at everything at the same time. Also, on the machine with no ball you don't have a result to evaluate.



Scrum technique is, however, not learned on the scrum machine. At best, the machine is useful for improving timing, grooving body position and building strength but actual scrumming technique is only learned by live scrumming. If your squad isn't large enough to make full scrums possible on a regular basis it's worth making the effort to arrange joint squad sessions with another club. These sessions need to be properly organized as practices, of course. Going down the road just to get mauled by a vastly superior scrum only interested in grinding your players into the dirt doesn't help so ground rules and objectives need to be agreed, established and explained. Given this, I'd say that a few sessions made up of six sets of three attack scrums and three defence scrums with pauses for evaluation and feed-back between each set will provide great benefits. If you mix and match players during these sessions be sure to do so in sets so that everybody gets a real chance to become part of the scrum culture.

This sort of session also provides a very good opportunity, as is every scrum session, to encourage the squad to talk freely about their roles. I've known scrums to operate inefficiently for an entire season before the crucial piece of information that, it turns out, "everybody knows" comes to light. While the coach can only observe at a distance the players KNOW what's going on in the scrum. They know who's putting in the effort and who's not. They know when technique is working and when it isn't. Recognize, however, that they may be reluctant to express this knowledge to the coach and having given your comments after a set send them off for the traditional "trot around the posts" during which the DM should try to get this feedback into the public domain. Only then can you and they use it.

Full scrums are not the only way to build technique, however. 1 on 1s, 2 on 2s, 3 on 3s and 5 on 5s all provide slightly different learning opportunities - particularly for lateral stability and bind rigidity as well a good strength workouts. Carried out in sets - e.g. each side tries to take the other left, then right, lift/drop him/them (it's worth doing this one a few times so that players recognise what can happen to them - but of course everybody must exercise care!), right again, left again and finish with one side alternatly attacking and choosing it's tactic and the other 'locking-out' in defence say three times each. These drills drive home the necessity for good body position and, in particular, good foot placement in a very forceful way. Note that a standard trigger sequence should be used every time and that the safety rules should be always reiterated.

All the forwards should participare in these drills and it actually does no harm for backs to be involved once in a while. (The sight of a winger being called in to bolster a seven-man scrum after a sin-binning and having no idea what to do is inclined to upset most coaches.)

Scrum practice is not complete without the ball. Hookers and scrum-halves have presumably worked together on the technique and timing of the put-in but the rest of the pack needs to have opportunity to practice delivering the ball swiftly in the chosen channel. The left lock in particular always needs to make sure his footwork is adequate to the task. Likewise 8 pick-ups cannot be left to chance especially if you plan to support them properly so breaking explosively from the scrum and finding the correct attacking line also needs to be coached. Top of Page



The Lineout



Unlike the scrum, success in the lineout depends on the successful completion of several quite different actions by a number of different lineout units. In other words there are a lot of things that can go wrong! Thus, attempting to coach the beginning lineout using complete lineouts doesn't make a lot of sense, there is just too much happening and the necessary focus is quickly lost. Ten conventional seven-man lineouts -say fifteen minutes of practice time - means that the thrower throws ten times but individual supporters and jumpers may be actually involved only four or five times and the other lineout members even less. No wonder minds wander!

Breaking the lineout down into its units allows much more intensive practice and more specific coaching opportunities. For example, in fifteen minutes a pod can easily make 30 or more lifts and catches. Involving two pods or mix and matching pods can give you even more especially if you have two throwers available. Even more important, throwing, jumping, supporting and delivering the ball can be repeated until the fatigue threshold where poor performance begins is reached. This should be the target. There are numerous useful drills - I'm a fan of 'Lineout Tennis' myself but it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with other equally valuable drills. Start with one pod who take the ball at a point between the 5m and 15m lines indicated by the coach's call. On this front the more throws your throwers make the better - in fact throwers simply cannot practice their art too much! Asking them to continue throwing through their fatigue threshold is the only realistic preparation for play in a match.

It is well worth keeping statistics - e.g. the percentage of successful throws, lifts, catches and deliveries etc. by each player - during this sort of practice not only to point up particular problem areas but to be able to demonstrate that progress is being made. (Particular note should be made of recurring errors. There's usually an injured player or two around willing to put pen to paper for a few minutes thus allowing the coach to work on specific actions.) Once all (or maybe 'most' is more realistic - supporting successfully is a knack that doesn't come easily to every player ) forwards can support successfully the drills can move on to mix and matching pods, moving pods around and misdirection of the opposition.

Defence drills should not be neglected. Coaches will need to develop appropriate guidelines about when and where to compete in the air and when and where to defend aggressively on the ground but the value of stealing the opposition's ball should never be underestimated - especially if it can be delivered quickly to a credible striker.

When the lineout is finally assembled to practice for the next match the most crucial thing is to maintain the intensity of the unit-based practice. Players neither supporting nor catching have a real tendency to nod off, calls get missed and errors creep in. DMs must be particularly vigilant to make sure this doesn't happen since it is my strong belief that most lineout lost are lost through simple inattention.

Top of Page

Misdirection Tactics
It is a good idea to conceal your line-out intentions although it must be admitted that most defences won't take the slightest bit of notice if you don't. Their most likely defence plan is to throw somebody up at 2 and once in a while when they remember and the lock who has to lift can bring himself to do it, at 4. This means that you can almost always throw to 6 with impunity and if you really want the ball closer to the touch-line you can probably have it at 3 (i.e. 4 going forward) without fear of interference. The reason for this lack of attention on your opponents' part is the same reason for much of the mental blindness that plagues rugby. Brains stop before legs. And, anyway, the line-out is a place to get my breath back, isn't it?

But let's imagine you come up against a team that does think, that stays aware and that sees your line-out as a prime source of 1st phase ball -- the Wallabies, for example. It's not difficult to imagine that they can read your situation almost as well as you can so they already know what you're likely to do next and by inference the sort of tactic you're contemplating. If you're likely to want to put your backs away with an OTT (off-the-top) delivery then they'll have men in the air at 2/4 and 6, no problem. As a result you must either beat them where you want to beat them or confound them by going elsewhere.

Look to your tactics also. The line-out isn't over, and the back defence can't move up until the ruck/maul moves beyond the line of touch. So catch, down and HOLD at 2, if it can be achieved, would technically give you many of the advantages of OTT -- except position, of course.

Getting clean ball where you want it (assuming determined opposition) requires that the opposition is either in the wrong place or in position at the wrong time. You can't dummy the throw and reasonable expediency is required so it is probably more efficient to put him in the wrong position and of all the wrong positions behind you is the one you should be striving for. As a result, the most likely tactic is to take him back with a feint and then come forward to get in front of him. (You can also be successful if you can get WELL behind him -- sometimes possible if his pod is blocked by their own men . Flankers are notoriously inattentive in this situation and find it difficult to encompass the needs of a pod moving backwards at the same time as looking vaguely at the sky and imagining their devastating tackles on your 10 all at the same time. On balance though, finding a way to be in front of the defence is the way to go.) Note that if you feint back and the defence doesn't come you're in the clear.

Line-out defence
From the above, assuming you've forgiven my sarcasm, simply throwing men up in place at 2 and 4 has definite value. However if you want to do better and here you need to take into account the disruption you'll cause to the attacking team to see the value you must be more aggressive. The first obvious attribute of a fully committed defensive line-out is mobility. Few packs can reasonably hope to field more than two pods in defence so these pods must have the freedom to make their jump where it will do the most good. Thus, all non-pod members should be prepared to retreat 1m as soon as the ball is thrown. This goes against the grain of most forwards since they've always been told to step up instead but it can be done. It goes without saying that these defence pods must execute with a level of skill far above that required by attacking (own-ball) situations.

Top of Page

Restarts

Mid-field - Kicking
There is little or no innovation in mid-field restarts. Nobody seems to have given the problem much though or if they have the situation must not lend itself to creativity. The kick to open is about as effective as the well-placed normal-side kick. Of course, the poorly placed kick -- too far, miss-hit short or other is punished regularly by alert well-coached receivers. But don't worry, well-coached receivers are rare on the ground. Most packs are forgiving souls and will react as follows: Having carefully called for and caught the ball they'll turn their backs so that they can't take unfair advantage and wait patiently for your forwards to arrive and the maul to form (See: Mauls).

Joking aside: Well drilled teams confident of their ability to be under the ball divide the chasing players into ball contenders and cleaneruppers, the contenders (locks etc.) obviously trying to get into the air to recover the ball while the cleaneruppers (flankers and suchlike) lurk around (usually one in front of the contenders and two behind) to pounce on defensive fumbles.

What is the minimum outcome you will accept from a mid-field restart? Let's say it is a line-out with your throw-in behind the opposition's 10m line? (i.e. you're going to force the opposition to make a pressured kick or bundle them into touch.)  All right. Now, how can you be sure of achieving this?

Questions like this help design tactics and, more important, help each player to know exactly what is expected of him. For example, the kicker now knows that he must either put the ball where the mass of forwards can get into the act or deep enough to encourage a kick for touch -- hopefully pressured by your chasers -- and the rest of the team know which it's going to be. In both cases they know that they must snuff out wide moves from the opposition. Thus, it's not just happenstance. You've set concrete objectives. If it's shorter and the maul forms they know which direction to push, if it's longer they know they have to form a line, make the tackle or take position to cut off the pass.

A last point on midfield restarts. Having recently watched a number of rugby league games I have been impressed by the number of kickoffs that land within 5m of the goal line. Obviously the whole shape of rugby league is quite different from rugby union but it is obvious to me that in these circumstances league players confidently expect that they will stop the receiving team from progressing out of the 22 ball in hand. Why don’t union sides have the same confidence? If your team could be sure of forcing the first breakdown to be in their danger zone, i.e. inside their 22 and in front of the posts, surely you have a platform for agressive defence and a liklihood of positive outcomes. Maybe there’s room for experimentation here.

Top of Page

Mid-field starts -- receiving

On recent evidence this is one of the few opportunities for a team to use (totally illegal) blocking tactics with impunity! Or at least that's what South Africa, Ireland, Australia, the All Blacks and NZA all did on one recent weekend.

As soon as the ball was in the air and its likely landing point understood the receivers in front of the landing point converged into a loose shield in front of the landing point leaving a pair of catchers and a couple of cleanuppers to actually deal with the ball. In virtually every case the chasing forwards could not/did not penetrate this blocking screen in time and the catchers had easy catches. In no case was obstruction called.

The tried and true tactic of lurking inadvertently (and usually sheepishly) offside behind moving mauls and by sheer coincidence finding yourself between the opposing 9 and 10 just at the crucial moment of the recycle is finally being spotted and dealt with by decent refs so this screen tactic will probably be recognized eventually. In the interim it doesn't hurt to know about it.

Receiving midfield restarts is a problem that every team hopes to have. And often! What is odd is that once the ball is loudly yelled for and caught few teams seem to have a coherent plan about what to do next. One might even adopt a Macchavellian approach and figure out what the kicking team's intention is! The trick then would be to make sure they don't achieve it.

Back to real life!
On the assumption that the ball can be caught cleanly and thus made available at least 50% of the time due to the inaccuracy and lack of hangtime of most kicks it seems to me that once caught it should be moved away from the reception point immediately and some sort of attack smartly initiated instead of being held until the traditional (low-risk) maul is formed. If the ball is moved backwards, e.g. to 10 or 15, the close proximity of the 22 line and its persuasive influence on these players to kick for touch provides a complicating factor in the above proposal. However, if this almost irresistible urge to kick can be resisted the attacking options seem worthy of exploration: an immediate rolling maul up the touchline may work followed by a quick box kick, say.

I recently watched a drill run at practice in which 6 players spaced across the 22 were expected to gather a "kick-off" from the goal-line, get into position and mount a running attack against 4 players chasing the kick. It was expected that the attackers would "score" every time -- which they did, more or less. Watching this it occured to me that this was actually a kick-off in microcosm. Of course, there are more than 4 defenders chasing the kick but since the defending forwards who mount the real chase generally concentrate exclusively on the ball maybe they can be treated as one big one. Given this line of thought the defender is already "fixed" and a swift pass from the receiver to put the ball toward the middle of the field should potentially set up an attack wide. It's not always going to be on but if it is it certainly shifts the advantage.

Top of Page