Coaching & Team Management
These articles look at some of the methods you as a rugby coach can adopt to improve your performance and that of the team. Whether to add value to your training sessions, refresh your rugby management strategies or reinvigorate your coaching, the aim is to enhance your all-round effectiveness.
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Wise Words from the Experts
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Three acknowledged rugby coaching experts provide tips on their coaching strategies.
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Make a Difference on Match Days
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How you can control the game from the dug out.
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The Half Time Huddle
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This is a vital time for the coach. It must be carefully thought out to leave the players revitalised and prepared for the second half.
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11 Great Ways to Use Tackle Bags
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This man-sized tube provides you with a chance to improve your players' tackling skills. Are you getting the most out of your tackle bags?
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Why Your Management Style Matters
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How you manage the players and the team, and who and how you make decisions has a huge impact on results.
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Touch Rugby to Make Your Players Shine
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This simple game concentrates on running, support play and passing ability, ensuring a great skills and fitness workout for the entire team.
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Pep Up Your Training Runs
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Hill running is a great way to add some variety to routine running fitness workouts.
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What Not to Say!
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"You've got to get your first tackle in early, even if it's late." Ray Gravell, Welsh centre of the 1970s.
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Dynamic Stretching Routines
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You don't need to be a physio expert to introduce these stretches into your team's warm up routines.
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9 Ways to Train with Tyres
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A fun alternative to the usual drill equipment, to boost core skills and fitness.
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6 Super Sub Strategies
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Tactical substitutions are a common feature of modern rugby. Peter Tann explains how we can make the best use of these players.
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Stats, Games & Videotape
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Top sides have analysts to break down every phase of the game. Here's how you can adapt some of their techniques for your team.
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6 Ways to Get to Grip with Grids
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Grids are sometimes used as an end in themselves, rather than as the means to an end. Here's how you can enhance your use of grids.
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Playing Against a Side that Cheats
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The fine line between playing the referee and knowing the referee.
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5 Easy Steps to Devising a Team Strategy
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How to focus your planning and coaching to make the best use of your time, resources and players.
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Making Core Skills Fun
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Core skills training can be a chore. Here's how to add some variety to make the process more fun and develop the skills quicker.
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Training with Tennis Balls
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Tennis balls make a welcome alternative from the usual rugby ball work and also teach good technique.
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5 Alternative Ways to Train with Cones
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Better Rugby Coaching experimented with using cones to add a different dimension to training, breaking up the normal routines.
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8 Ways to Start Next Season Before the End of this One
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The final weeks of the rugby season are not just a good time to reflect and review. They are also a great time to start planning.
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Improvised Training
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Sessions to pull out of the coaching toolkit when your plans have gone awry.
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Make Your Side Better Tacklers
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Concentrate on getting the right mindset to get your players to tackle more effectively.
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Overspeed Training
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Assisted running techniques to get your players faster.
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Passing Along the Floor
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A lucky break, or a potent attacking weapon?
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8 Steps to Become a Better Youth Coach
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Better Rugby Coaching gives you some short steps, not massive changes, to improve your youth coaching this week.
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A Great Scrummaging Session (Part 1)
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How to run an effective scrummaging session in 30 minutes.
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A Great Scrummaging Session (Part 2)
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How to run an effective scrummaging session in 30 minutes.
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5 Ways to Make New Players Part of Your Team
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A successful team is an apparently stable one. Peter Tann offers a five step guide to reducing the unsettling nature of introducing new players.
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Winning Quicker Ruck Ball in 6 Easy Steps
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Quick ball means a chance to run at a less organised defence. But if your team simply can't produce the sort of ball your scrum half needs, here are some cures.
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6 Attributes to Look for in Your Captain
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The captain's job is to ensure that each player is in the right frame of mind to give all they have to the team. Peter Tann offers his advice.
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Training the Back Row
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Ways to help improve this unit's performance.
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Is Your Team Getting Enough Fuel?
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What we eat and drink provides the fuel for us to train, play and recover. We as coaches are in a position to influence our players to become healthier.
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Am I Still a Good Coach?
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All coaches have moments of reflection or even doubt. Here are some tried and tested methods to reinvigorate your coaching.
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Thinking Outside the Box - Circle Grids
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Training a large group can be difficult. Try circle grids for a different approach.
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Making Communication the Key (Part 1)
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The best rugby players at any level are never quiet in attack or defence. A two part article by Paul Tyler.
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Making Communication the Key (Part 2)
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The best rugby players at any level are never quiet in attack or defence. A two part article by Paul Tyler.
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Blind Passing – Silent Support
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Are you brave enough to try these things?
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Touch Rugby – Friend or Foe?
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Playing touch rugby can pay dividends when it comes to full contact matches.
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Using Touch Rugby to Improve the Basics
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How touch rugby can allow your players to experiment and extend their core skills.
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Rugby in Union?
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What rugby union can learn from rugby league.
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Pre-Season Do's and Don'ts
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In all the excitement of pre-season training, it is possible to forget some of the principles of preparing your team for the first game, or indeed the whole season.
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Laws Reminders - Knees - Lineouts and Crossing
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Can't you remember all the Laws?
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Did You Watch a Different Match?
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A guideline to help you evaluate your team during and after the match.
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7 Ways to Improve Passing with Footwork
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Which of your players concentrates on getting their feet right before they pass the ball?
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The Rugby Black Book
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How the black book led to England winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup.
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Pre-Match Warm-Ups
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Your pre-match routine should be about both mental and physical preparation.
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Fundamentals of a Great Lineout Session
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Repeat, perfect. Oppose, compete.
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Concentrate on the Five
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Colin Ireland sets out exercises to test the five core skills.
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The Innovative Coach
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John Schropfer challenges the way you think about the game.
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The One Session Workout
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Ken MacEwen shows you how to build your team's fitness and improve your players' skills at the same time.
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Tramlines Rugby Practice
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For Frank Hadden, the Scotland coach, practising the basics is an important part of training.
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7 Key Factors to an Intense Defence
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Getting your team organised and working together in defence can pay big dividends over the course of the season.
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Overload Attack Game
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Challenge your players' individual and unit defensive abilities.
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Periodization Uncovered
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What it is and how it can work for your team.
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Concentrate on the Five
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The core areas of the game that even the top players practise every week.
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5 Ways to Create a Controlled, Aggressive Team
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Following the example of the All Blacks.
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The Art of Falling Over
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How you fall makes a big difference to how well your side keeps the ball.
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Hold Your Breath – Here Comes Kabaddi
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An exciting all action invasion game, that can easily be applied to rugby.
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Touch Rugby to Make Your Players Shine
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Simple games with big skills and fitness gains.
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Taking the Fear Out of Refereeing
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My simple guide to the steps you can take to make it more enjoyable.
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Pop Cycles
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A full session to boost your team's short passing skills.
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Leadership Lessons from Attila the Hun
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If you need to bond your team to beat a well-organised and resourced opponent, who better than Attila to teach us a few things?
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A Heads Up About Headgear
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It is generally accepted that headgear will prevent surface wounds. It is far less clear whether they will protect against concussion.
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Strategies and Tactics for the Youth Game (Part 1)
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Youth rugby has a number of differences from the adult version and requires different strategies. In this article, part one of a two, I look at the lineout and attack kicking.
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Silent Running
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Making support players work harder.
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Game Specific Fitness - Upper Body Work Out
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Strength exercises for the arms and shoulders.
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Focus On Tackling Technique
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You can help improve your players' tackling technique with the "eyes, shoulder, arms" system.
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Good Hydrations
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We are aware that we need to take on more fluids during exercise, but it is not necessarily recognised in what form and how much.
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Attack Strategies - A Simple Way to Create Space
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A practice to improve inexperienced players' ability to attract defenders and free up space for team mates.
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Secrets of the Front Row - How Players Cheat
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It is helpful to know how cheating happens, so you can work out what strategies to overcome it.
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Winning - The Stats that Matter
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Let the statistics shape your season and your plans for every game.
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Coaching Rugby to Girls
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The number of teenage girls playing rugby has exploded! Fortunately, you've got years of experience coaching rugby to boys so know just what to do with the new girls - don't you?
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Faster Rugby Without Ladders
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Though fast feet ladders are becoming more common at training, using them can lead to problems.
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Reversing the Fortunes of a Losing Team
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Three rules from Bill Parcells, one of American football's most successful coaches.
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Designing the Perfect Drill
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The key elements of creating your own drills, to practise the skills you want to, when you want to.
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Seven Uses of Funny Feet to Improve Your Team's Passing
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Games to develop passing skills, particularly when unbalanced.
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Space – The Final Frontier
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Players who are able to recognise and then exploit space effectively are highly valuable, but rare.
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Freestyle Training to Build Creative Players
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A game of basketball with a rugby ball? What's the point?
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Rugby Quidditch
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Teaching younger players about space and evasion skills.
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Mauling with the ELVs
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The ELVs (experimental law variations) are experimental no more. One of the laws causing most controversy concerns the maul.
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Scrummaging with the ELVs
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The ELVs (experimental law variations) came into force on August 1st. You will have to adapt your coaching, or your team will struggle.
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The Scrum Half and the ELVs
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How scrum halves have to adapt their defensive duties at scrums under the ELVs (experimental law variations).
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The ELVs and Lineouts
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The ELVs have resulted in a number of changes to the lineout laws.
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Kicking from Your 22 Under the ELVs
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When the whistle blows in your next match you'd better be prepared.
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Running Sessions When Your 1st XV Is Way Better than Your 2nd XV
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Organising training sessions to make sure your "opponents" are effective.
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9 Clever Ways to Ramp Up Intensity
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"Intense" is the buzz word in rugby... according to the commentators at least.
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How to Tackle the Legs to Win More Turnovers
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Tackling the ball carrier's legs is one of the simplest ways of winning back the ball from the opposition.
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Encouraging Young Players to Be Confident in Contact
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It is vital we get younger players confident to take and make contact.
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How the Experts Coach Young Players
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It can be daunting to know where to start when coaching younger players. I asked seven elite coaches for their expert opinions.
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Rugby Fitness - Make it Personal
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Simple methods to creating "made-to-measure" fitness programmes for your players.
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Lumbering Forwards? Poor Backs?
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A problem solving approach to the many of the quandaries facing rugby coaches.
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Game Planning: Five Rules for Lumbering Forwards and Poor Backs
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Five game rules for every team.
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Lessons from the Masters
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There were two key elements to the way the legendary Jim Joseph coached: a simple game plan and a happy environment.
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Five Ways to Improve Tackling
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Most players, whatever their age, experience and skill level, can improve in their tackling.
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Quick Hands
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How to coach players to catch better and so improve their all round handling and evasion skills.
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Stop Slow Ball Killing Your Game
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Four key ways to speed up your game.
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The Honey Trap
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Five games to improve your players evasion and footwork skills.
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5 Minute Session Planner
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It's great to plan your training. But in the real world you sometimes simply have to get on with it.
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Four Golden Rules of Slow Ruck Ball
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All teams have to contend with "slow ball" at the tackle area. It's how you deal with it that matters.
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Dynamic, Specific Warm-Ups to Boost Your Players
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Ways to give your players a better start to training, whilst practising their core skills.
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Shadow Battle
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A great way to add a competitive element to an agility skills warm-up.
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Tips for Introducing Change
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The New Year and pre season can be great times to introduce change.
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Fitness Planning
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Three key tips to helping players get fitter.
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Keep Players Coming to Training
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How publishing attendance records encourages players to turn up.
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Pre-Season in a Week
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A guide to making the most of your limited time.
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Support Play to Speed Up Your Attacks
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Paul Tyler looks at helping your support players make the best decision depending on what is in front of them.
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Power Step into Contact
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Putting the would-be tackler on the back foot.
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Periodization Uncovered
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Can periodization training plans work for you?
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Periodization Training Plan
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An example training plan for the first four mesocycles of the season.
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Making Your Sessions More Realistic
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Lynn Kidman, a leading author on player-centred coaching, challenged coaches to think about their style of coaching and how they could improve the way they approached their teams.
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An Innovative Way to Mix Up the Intensity of Your Sessions
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Using experimential and structured training sessions to boost performance.
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Getting Back in the Game After the Tackle
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A player on the ground can't play rugby. So how do you go about getting up and back into the game?
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Aggressive Defence, Decisive Attack
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How South Africa won the Rugby Workd CUp in 2007.
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Don't Just Recycle the Ball, Recycle Your Players
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Getting your players to recognise that they don't stop contributing until the ball goes dead.
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Do Your Players Understand You?
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One of the best ways to check you are challenging your players' understanding is by using "open questions", that is a question which requires more than a "yes" or "no" answer.
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Training Solutions
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5 ways to train with limited space
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How Can You Improve What You Do?
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A simple way to help you develop and progress as a coach.