Principles of Play - Support! image
Posted on June 28th 2018 by Richard Hicks

Principles of Play - Support!

In the previous campaign we discussed go fowards, probably the most important Principle of Play. However, as we know the PoP’s do not work in an isolated fashion. One of the hardest aspects of coaching is getting players to understand the importance of an integrated approach to improving the PoP’s.

For example: Go Forwards relies heavily on Support (another principle of play).

Video: Improve support play

So what is support – what does it look like?

Without worrying about support shapes, depth, width, spacing, communication, timing, off-loading, etc we can simplify support by saying it is the team’s ability to give the ball carrier an option. This is often based upon the team’s ability to work without the ball.

Statistics for the professional game are gained through GPS data, so they can give accurate statistics for ball carrying. For example looking at England V Scotland in the last 2019 6N game.

  • England Carried the Ball for 668m with 58% possession
  • Scotland Carried the ball for 446m with 42% possession

The important takeaway here is that Scotland won! The team that has the ball doesn’t always use it best and doesn’t necessarily win. Therefore , potentially more importantly it is what the team does without the ball that can lead to victory.

Player’s run on average 6.7km a game but ball carrying accounts for less than 1% of total player time. Therefore for grassroots coaching we need to generalise, with limited ball carrying time they need to be effective with the ball and we need to be smart with our coaching.

Action points for the pre-season…to improve our ability to support we need to:

  • Improve the player’s ability to run further without the ball.
  • Develop their skills with the ball when they have it.
  • Appreciate that often players not involved in the game have low intensity levels and therefore a low impact on the game.
  • The more players you have involved in the action the better.

So to coach smart you need to incorporate aspects into your coaching that include:

Many Professional Clubs have now employed a SUPPORT coach to focus purely on what the players do off the ball. As a grassroots coach you cannot provide this level of detail but what you can do is instill in your players the desire to work harder, be involved more and put themselves in positions to influence the game.

Walking around, standing still, resting might be needed but as we know the team that wants it more tends to put in the most effort without the ball… as Scotland did against England.