Getting It Right At The Breakdown! image
Posted on March 22nd 2019 by Richard Hicks

Getting It Right At The Breakdown!

Have you ever watched a community level game, noticed the chaos at a ruck and wonder why they cannot duplicate the professional model for the breakdown? The simple explanation is that there is a lot to get right before a ruck even takes place, each step takes a lot of time and effort to perfect!

Here's a quick outline of the steps leading up to the ruck:

1) Ball carry: How we hold the ball
2) Ability to fend: To keep opposition away from the ball

Video: How To Manage Contact
3) Footwork before collision: To take the tackle on their own terms
4) Managing Contact: To be in control of your moevements based on the location of supporting players.
5) Contact with the floor: Should we roll? Lie on the ball?
6) Ball presentation for supporting players:
Video: Ball Presentation

This all takes place in a few seconds of play!

Playing a relevant game is a great way to warm up and get players thinking about the breakdown tasks to be worked on. You can always add in constraints to the game as you see fit.

Video: Ruck Touch

Attacking constraint examples:

  • Always carry the ball in 2 hands
  • Must be footwork before contact
  • 360 roll on the floor

Within all of these, I might start off with a game of two handed touch (not one handed – teaches bad habits). When touched they would do all three of these constraints but the opposition cannot play the ball. The aim here is to be successful in the way we do 1-2-3.

Video: Coaching the breakdown

After all of this, only now do we start adding competition for the ball so that the player's learn how to execute these skills under pressure!

Doing the whole practice might sound great but sometimes you need to break it down or be able to understand how to develop your players understanding – all of them. To approach the technical development of this aspect we need our players to have knowlege of the different parts involved!

For more inspiriation visit the video library and access thousands of excellent examples of new ideas, old ideas done better and ideas you hadn’t thought of!

Watch Over 2500 Videos