Obstacle course and zones drill to help young players find space

The following innovative and fun rugby drills will help you solve the common problem of players bunching up and swarming around the ball, as rugby is about finding space and exploiting it.

You want your players to support each other, but it needs to be effective support. That is, support players taking a pass while moving onto the ball and running at space.

Obstacle course drill

As an alternative to your straight line passing drills, try this.

Set up a channel with some obstacles in it. You can use tackle pads, contact pads, poles, markers or anything else which comes to hand.
The players have to run and pass while avoiding all the obstacles. The ball must be handled by every player in the group before the end of the channel.

Drill to get players passing and running with obstacles.

If you find some players are reluctant to pass, put cones at intervals down each side. Each ball carrier then has to pass before reaching the next cone.

You can add a competitive element to this rugby drill if you time each group from receiving the ball to scoring at the far end.

Passing zones drill

Using zones can help keep players in certain parts of the pitch. It is a process which takes time to develop in training drills.

In this drill, there are four attackers and two defenders. The defenders can move in any direction to any part of the drill area. The attackers have to stay in their zone, but can pass and run.

This will help maintain space between the attacking players, but may lead to a lot of passing with little go forward.

To develop a go forward aspect, allow each attacking player to move one zone left or right.

Passing zones rugby drill where players stay in certain parts of the pitch.

Possible quick fix

By playing the best player out wide on the wing, it's an incentive for his team mates to get the ball out to him, thus creating width and a bit of space.