Due to a crippling Knee unjury, I am no longer able to play rugby, so this year I willbe caoching the girls team. none of them have ever played before, and i have never coached before. I surruptitiously ran out of drillsto use today, and was wondering if anyone could orogvide any. Ball handling, tackling, fitness related syuff all welcome. Anything that hapens to be fun is even better.
Just a couple of things that spring to mind Rory, when coaching rucking/mauling get the kids to play ‘airoplanes’ meaning stick out your arms in order to help bind to other players, when tackled or going to ground, play ‘pull the rip cord’ with the free arm ie pretend to pull down, arm goes down, shoulder goes down, body goes down and hey presto, ball faces your side. I guess asking the front row to not shave for two days before in order to cut up the eyebrows of the opposition isn’t quite what you were looking for. Oh, and tape up their ears with black insulation tape, makes 'em look and feel mean!
i hate bumping… but sometimes it has to be done.
Are there simply no Rugby players among the Teeming Millions? I know it’s not popular in the Us, but surely… at least some foreign user…
“C’mon, it’s not even tomorrow yet…” - Rupert
If you need a graphic solution, http:\ alk.to\Piglet
i’ve heard of a sadistic little drill Life college uses, and, though i doubt your girls would appreciate it, i can’t resist entering it.
first, get yourself a lot of sand. second, make that sand into a big ole hill. third, get yourself some truck tires w/o tubes. fourth, hoist a tire over each shoulder, run up the sand hill. run back down. run up again. you get the idea.
sorry i can’t tell you much more than that. my dad plays (still going strong at 50), but i don’t myself.
-ellis
I played against a guy who was seventy if he was a day. It was disconcerting.
did he have gold shorts? i’ve seen a couple of truly old boys at the lake placid/saranac CanAm tourney and at the new hampshire “old man in the mountain” tourney, with gold shorts that signify they can’t be tackled, only “gently brought to the ground.”
-ellis
It truly is a wonderful sport in that way. I played Club Rugby with The Toronto Nomads RFC… there were guys on the first team over 40 and guys on the 3rd and 4th teams over 60.
Which brings us back to the OP…
Guys? Anyone?
“C’mon, it’s not even tomorrow yet…” - Rupert
If you need a graphic solution, http:\ alk.to\Piglet
eliss555, no gold shorts, this was in the Merseyside, Gtr Manchester league a couple of years ago. Neat idea though, although it must get a bit tedious waiting for him to score again as soon as he gets the ball…?
Rory, I supppose you’re just going to have to come to terms with the fact that yet another great sport has passed the majority of the Americans by.
The majority, yes. Not all of us. I played for over twenty years, and have unfortunately had to retire due to (horrors!) the increasing demands of fatherhood. I think you would best be served by investing in a book about coaching rugby. Try this: http://www.rugbyrugby.com/recommendedbooks/recommended.asp . They all appear to be available from Amazon.com. Should have it within a couple of days. I could describe all the drills I can recall, but that would take all night, and I don’t think it would be all that effective without diagrams. Cheers.
Christ, what an imagination I’ve got…
the gold shorts occurred only in old boys (>40) games, and i think you had to be over 60 to wear a pair. maybe 70, but that seems a little excessive. basically, if you bear hugged the guy, he had to cough up the ball.
also, Rory, you might support matt godek instead of amazon. http://www.rugbystore.com/index.htm
-ellis
Some drills that I remember from school–
-Line them up in four lines on the corner of a fairly small square. Put a ball in two of the four lines. Have the first in line run towards the opposite diagonal and make a pop pass to the person coming towards them from the other corner at roughly the center of the square. Both diagonals should be running the drill simultaneously, so as to create maximum chaos in the middle, so as to keep people running with their heads up. Run it at full speed until they get sloppy and crash into each other. (Also, watch for people making forward passes.)
-Same as above, but put a ball in each line. First person in line runs towards opposite corner and makes a pop pass to the next person waiting in line there. Basically the same drill as above, but the passes are being made at the corners and you have twice as many people running.
-same as above, but instead of pop passes, have each person strip the ball (on the run) from the person carrying it.
-same as above, but each person with the ball puts it on the deck in the center of the square and the trailing person scoops it.
-Put five or six people in a widely spaced column along the sideline. Each kneels down. Two players basically run up the column with a ball while the players on their knees wrap and tackle. The person with the ball should practice presenting or going down and rolling over the ball, while the trailing person scoops it up and goes onto the next tackler.
-Repeat the same with the tacklers standing. We used to do a gauntlet version where everone on the team was in one long line of defenders and groups of 2-3 players took turns worked on hitting the defender, turning, and presenting for a strip. If the players dropped the ball or a defender knocked it out of their hands, they started over again.
-Run wide backfield lines-- 7, 8, 9 people. The fly half passes off to the inside center, loops around behind the IC and takes the pass from him, passes to the outside center, loops him, etc. all the way down the line. Full speed. Rotate each person in one position and repeat.
-As a warm up, we used to circle up and pass the ball around the circle. As a drill, have the person who starts the passing around the circle take off at full speed and run around the outside of the circle trying to beat the ball back to the starting point. The people passing should work on quick, clean passes to beat the runner.
-When in doubt, just play sevens for the rest of the workout. A well-run game of sevens can do more for positioning and passing than any drill ever could.
And then go get drunk…
Nurlman, that all sounds just fine if you want to generate a load of sissy wanna be wingers or fly-halves, but what about creating some good hookers or props? How the hell are they supposed to do all this fancy passing and stuff 
Give 'em a wall and a ball and tell 'em to run at it 'til it hurts no more, now that’ll separate the hookers from the tarts in the backs 
Geez, I can’t help it if my brain was bigger around than my neck, and I was thus automatically disqualified from playing in the pack.
I dunno-- give 'em a ball and tell them that the person holding onto it 5 minutes from now gets first crack at the keg. Then check back in an hour. God knows scrummies can’t keep track of time.