Tactics – The New Season and What to Look Out For.

By Kooga
August 19 2005

Tactics, not the little mints, they’re tictacs. The dictionary definition: pl n The art of handling troops, ships in battle; methods, plans. So putting them into a rugby context they’re methods or plans to achieve objectives – field position, tries etc.

Rugby is all about maintaining and regaining possession of the ball. The team in possession is king, it allows them to go forward and potentially score points. Let’s look at some areas which we may witness this season:

Lets begin with restarts; from the kick off or restarts after points have been scored the ball has been traditionally kicked towards the opposition’s forwards standing between their 10 metre and 22 metre lines This gives the ball to possibly the most powerful players in the opposition to counter attack.

What we will probably see now is either a very high kick or very long kick, into the opponents 22, but more directly towards the posts. For this kick you will need an organised follow up pattern. Look where the openside flanker on the kicking side is; he’s possibly going to be close to the kicker ready to chase from the blindside of the opposition fly half. This will tend to lead to the catcher on the deep into the 22 kick to play safe and kick to touch; if he doesn’t we’ll be able to capitalise on it.

For lesser teams it may make sense tactically to kick to the right hand side bring your teams strong side into play, or kicking to your backs rather than your forwards. In the process the kicker should also try to bounce the ball into touch as you’ll often find the opponents leave only one player to cover 50 metres of touch line.

The 22 metre drop out; the idea of kicking the ball straight to the opposing pack only a few metres from your 22 metre line is tactical suicide. What we will see this season is to get the ball as far away from our 22 metre line as we safely can from the opposition with the basic follow up pattern. The best bet is to bounce it in to touch as near the half way line as possible.

We have also witnessed the tactics employed in sevens, doing a tiny drop kick to yourself. The aim is to retain possession. This is only viable if there is space to develop an attack from that possession.

Alternatively, we can always accept a scrum rather than a kick which obviously offers a foolproof way of retaining possession, though I wouldn’t expect to see this during the coming season.

Have you ever thought why when an attacking team are awarded a penalty and they elect to kick to touch why they favour kicking to the left hand touchline as they go forward?

It is to give their jumpers the edge. Some may be aware that under law 19.9(o) catching or deflecting – when jumping for the ball, a player must use either both hands or the inside arm to try to catch or deflect the ball.



Therefore if it is our lineout on the left hand touch as most players are right handed they have the advantage of using their strong side to try to catch or deflect the ball.

Another thing that has crept in to the game is abuse of the offside law at the ruck. Law 11.8 states that at a scrum, ruck, maul or lineout a player is offside if the player is in front of the offside line as described in the relevant parts of those laws.

In a ruck the offside line is the back foot of the rearmost player in the ruck so everyone not involved must be behind the back foot. This is for all players – defenders and attackers. When you watch your next game look at the attacking team around the ruck, how many of those players not involved in the ruck are in front of the back foot?

This is just a few thoughts to try and explain what teams are trying to do on the park and hopefully enhance your enjoyment of the game. If I can think of any other tactical guidelines I’ll update you throughout the season.