Training

Training was muddy, but fun, this morning.
The lights flickered in the clubhouse at Dunston, as 25 washing machines all powered on at the same time, draining the national grid but cleaning the much dirtied rugby kit.

Jokes aside, it was a good morning of rugby training and by the looks of the kids, they ALL got stuck in!

I wanted to give you some insight into what was planned and how it actually transpired when it came to training.

So the original plan, shared with the team of coaches at 8am this morning was as follows:

"9.30-9.45 warm up
Split into 2 or 3 groups. Looking for 10 in a group.

9.45-9.55 one v one, in small square to encourage the tackle.
Just rotate through players all to tackle .
9.55-10.05 2v1 add an extra attacker. Looking at elimination skills here. So things like movement off the ball, deception, pass round the back.
10.05-10.15 - 2v2 add extra defender and put all the earlier tackling and evasion into practice.
10.20-10.40 - touch "ruck" game. Still in the teams if 10, so 5v5 game. If touched player drops down to floor and places ball back. Tackler can compete for ball. We need to encourage them to get back inside, enter the ruck through the gate, two in the ruck and scrum half.

10.40-11.00 finish with a game if they're all still standing. "

We didn't differ too far from the plan, which was good for a change!
The warmup moved to a game of scarecrow tag, which is always a good one to get (some) of them running around.
The numbers were different to what I expected, so we just had the two groups to work with but that worked out fine.
The "tackle box" games worked well, and progressed from 1v1 to 2v1 and then a 2v2, in a small box.
The group with the new players in took a bit longer as we helped the new ones to learn some tackle techniques, but they didn't show any fear on that side.
The "touch ruck" game worked very well when the teams realised it was focussed on winning the rucks, rather than all about scoring tries. Also was much better when the scrum half passed away from the ruck area and into space, instead of picking and running with it.
At the very end, I (foolishly) decided to let the kids lead the session for 16 minutes. Maybe 6 minutes were taken up with them arguing, shouting, disagreeing and then setting up for a game of bulldog. But to their credit they managed to get it on and get organised themselves, which is all I wanted.

Next week is away at Amber Valley and details will be updated on pitchero/whatsapp once we have the start time etc.

Enjoy your week

Steve