When building a defensive system you must first consider where to start and the philosophy of your coaching.

For example, do you start by making the player a better tackler or do you start by putting principles in place for your team and go straight into organisation.

There is no right and wrong answer here, it’s what you believe is right for your team. A young and inexperience team, for example, might need to learn to tackle properly before worrying about systems while a team that has more years and mileage might get enthused about a new system.

What is right is that you must spend time on defence whether you are a player or coach.  In days gone by very little time was given to defence if at all but since the introduction of defence coaches at the elite level most teams have seen the logic of preparing to defend- after all the opposition do have the ball 50% of the game!

Figure out how much of your training time you need to spend on defence- most teams split their training time equally between attack, set-piece and defence- that’s 33%.

Over the next few weeks Ruckingball will be giving tips on how to build a system separating it the following headlines:

• Part 1: Tackle technique- this can already be located in our Ruckipedia section which includes coaching points on all the different tackles.
• Part 2: Which system/call and languages used/principles
• Part 3: Defending the Ruck- Plays off 9
• Part 4: Defending the midfield- plays off 10
• Part 5: Set-piece Defence
• Part 6: Transition defence from turnover/ kick chase
• Part 7:YOUR CALL – an opportunity to cover what you want! Just comment what would like on this article.

The Defence Guru