Coaching with Russell Earnshaw
A bluffers guide to attack…
Thankfully, my formative years in rugby saw me play multiple positions, being encouraged to play ‘what’s in front’ and given a regular diet of sevens. More recently, I have been lucky enough to be an ex-forward coaching England’s future backs and so have developed my thinking around attack to ensure coaches better connect the low and the high numbers.
The start point for any attack coach are the ‘Principles of Play’. In rugby, players must be able to answer questions based upon these.
What’s the best way to get the ball forward?
Where is the best space?
How might we better support the ball and the space to then achieve this?
How do we coach the player on the ball and support players off the ball to influence and dictate to defences?
If we make contact with the enemy, what could continuity look like?
Without the ball, how can we score?
What are our strengths as a team and how can we use (and develop) them to achieve all of this?
The game of the future will not be rugby by numbers.
Firstly, as coaches, we may need to change players’ (and other coaches!) intent. A mindset of scoring rather than ‘building phases’ – you are less likely to score the more phases you have. So, let’s start off by tackling some common (incorrect) assumptions…
• ‘Kicking is for karate’…
Kicking is actually a great way to get the ball forward and score and with the new 50:22 law trial is becoming an essential skill for ALL players
• The ball player has to go to ground and present the ball ‘long and strong’…
In 2010, Fiji won the 2010 Wellington 7s with five rucks in six games – it’s a game of evasion.
• The player with ‘9’ on his back has to play scrum-half… Against New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup, thirteen of England’s players passed the ball from a ruck in the game.
• Interceptions are risky...
Actually, it’s the easiest way to score and a great way to break your opponents.
• We need to structure attack so the players know what to do…
What if the game looks different? What if we become predictable?
• Forwards can’t/shouldn’t (*insert skill).
What’s the benefit of not? Coach players, not positions...
To help the players answer these questions in attack, in the England Pathway we identified five key skills to help the players thrive in the game of the future (Creativity, Awareness, Resilience, Decision-Making, Self-Organisation). Maybe take a moment to think about what skills your players need and how you will coach them…
After this often sits an attacking framework, preferably based around the skill set of your players – if you have Owen Farrell at 12, you might play differently to if Jamie Roberts was in the same position – and so you will hear commentators talking of 1-3-3-1 or 2-4-2. This is, basically, where the forwards are told to stand because we assume that without that information they would not know where to stand. 2-4-2 is two forwards in each 15m channel and four in the space in-between. In fact, off-the-ball accounts for over 95 per cent of the game so we need to develop their awareness of this. As an example, Marcus Smith is much more effective with inside support as it allows him to hold defenders on the inside or create a line-break for himself or someone else. A good framework based upon the strength of your players can then be facilitated by coaches…
So, some clues as to how you might achieve this…
• The first of two things we control as coaches is practice design. Google ‘Danny Newcombe’ if you are curious, he’s the godfather. My advice, develop your own skill games based upon the needs of your players (*insert skill games).
• Once this is done, spend more time in small-sided games such as the ‘Rugby Rondo’ and on tactical warfare to develop the skills needed in actual games.
• If you are unclear about tactical warfare, think England versus Italy in 2017 when the best players in England were struggling to solve the problems presented to them by Brendan Venter’s defence. Take that into your training – each team to have different scoring systems which they have to exploit whilst at the same time working out the opposition’s and denying them.
• When designing games, think intentionally about how you might vary space and numbers for certain outcomes (e.g. larger space might mean longer passes, less players might mean more touches and decisions). Fifteen-a-side in the wind and rain might mean Jonny May doesn’t touch the ball much. That said, he will get to practice his off-the-ball skills so there’s always a trade off!
• As you get the hang of this, maybe dip into a little bit of meta cognition through Video Game Design and get the players to think more about thinking (look up ‘Amy Price’ if you are curious). Be comfortable that you were not coached like this and that the world has changed!
• Have some constraints to help them… play ‘Life of the Ball’ so that when the ball stops moving, the ball is turned over (encourage depth), no-one talking to the ball player is a turnover (encourage communication) , a try is worth the number of completed passes (encourage passing). Build up a bank of useful coaching solutions, it helps prevent less-than-useful huddles...
• Within games, focus on the other thing you control...coaching behaviours. Develop your craft and practice introducing a second ball to get the situations you want to see in training, allowing players to ‘replay’ situations to support or stretch them, giving ownership of ‘time-outs’ to the players, asking the players to adapt the rules to get them thinking. And, the number one behaviour coaches can dial up around motivation is choice… give them it.
• Help the players to set both individual and small group challenges to stretch them. For example, five non-dominant hand passes in training. Put those into matches – that’s transfer!
• Think about where you are standing and why. What will you notice? It is after all, THE most important skill of any coach. Once again, question tradition, if the most important thing in attack is where the attackers are looking, then why are coaches stood behind?
• Spend more time with the defence, setting problems for your attack and seeing how they respond. If they struggle, that’s a coaching problem, not a player problem. Help them get better at seeing the defensive cues and finding solutions themselves rather than you telling them.
• Freeze and ask them to close their eyes more often. See what they have seen, not what you’ve seen. It’s important. They cannot make decisions with our seeing stuff. Make it your mission to stop them spending way too much time looking at the ball.
• Avoid the following: telling people there is one way to pass (not true); playing through the legs touch (that’s rugby league); commentating (you’re preventing them); saying meaningless words such as ‘good’ (what was good? why? how could it be even better?); and ‘unlucky’ (was it really unlucky?); looking at the ball all the time (try not looking at it… see!).
• Close the gap. Imagine how much better your attack would be if your less skilful attackers were as good as the more skilful ones… play people in different positions, give skilful players secret missions to make everyone else more skilful, include skills games in ‘forwards sessions’, have a skill zone next to the training games. Have a plan for this immediately, it’s currently a limiting factor...
• Be intentional around co-coaching. Ask the kids what they need from you and your fellow coaches. Based upon the above, they might want a Skillz Master, a Head of Scanning and an Off-the-Ball Wizard. Create coaching roles that currently do not exist...
• Train hard/fight easy. Look at how much of your current training is beyond the game from a speed of action and thought point of view.
• And, finally, have fun, smile, give out high fives when people are rocking it and imagine how good your attack is going to be...
This extract was taken from issue 9 of Rugby.
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