For today’s skill we’re going to be looking at identifying the weak shoulder of your defender and using that to exploit the space on the other side getting over the defensive line or at the minimum getting your hands free for an offload.
All right so, today’s drill we’re going to be looking at identifying the weak shoulder and Weak foot of your defender.
One of the first things you learn when you start playing rugby is your tackle technique so same same foot and same shoulder going forward for a Tackle and that’s that puts you in a really strong position to tackle with your right shoulder.
Same thing the other side but in this position my weak shoulder is going to be the left side.
So if if you ever see a defender in that position with one foot forward always take the other take the other side the weak shoulder weak foot.
In this drill Ricky is going to be helping us out, he’ll be defending and basically running running towardsme.
He stays inside the cones, just before i hit the cone Ricky is going to put one foot forward either his Right foot or his left foot and I’ve got to identify that as fast as i can and go the other way, change direction and go the other way coming up to the defender here.
As he steps out i’m changing direction when i change direction i also want to shift the ball away from the defender I can put a fend out and if Ricky manages to swing his arm out gets a weak arm in I can i can still offload the ball already behind him.
So that’s that’s kind of the position you want to be in going into contact.
When you’re practicing that drill as you’re approaching the defender you want to shorten your strides so that it’s easier to to change direction.
In a long stride you don’t really have much power if your strides are closer to you you can push off push off a lot harder and faster
Do about 10 of those 10 each with one of your friends it’s great before a rugby session or any other session it’s a good warm-up
Thanks Ricky for your time today, thanks for not hitting me too hard either, and we’ll see you guys next week on my TV Show.
Randall Kamea
