Many rugby clubs up and down the country play a game of touch rugby to warm up, this is a simple way to warm up, but is it really an effective warm up?
I am not going to go into what an effective warm up is, this has been covered many times in ruckipedia.
I am going to look at how you play touch. I am great believer in making touch rugby as realistic as a match putting the same pressures on, working on specific skills and exaggerating skills practice by conditioning the touch games.
When checking my blog you will see articles on drift touch, channel touch, New Zealand touch, ruck touch, aerobic touch. These all focus on different aspects of the full game and practice skills that can be used in matches.
This weak I am going to focus on weak man touch. This game looks to exploit miss matches & weakness. It will work on scanning, identification, communication and awareness of space.
Equipment
Balls
Cones
Bibs – 4 different colours
Whistle
Set Up
Mark out pitch size with cones according to number of players.
Each team will have at least one player with a different colour bib on to the rest of his team & opposition. The number of these players will increase with the numbers playing.
The player/players with different colour bibs are “weak” players in your team they have set conditions to play which can be conditioned to suit the needs of the drill. Examples below.
Defence – touches/tackles don’t count; can’t make touches/tackles to their right or left; can only chase for 5 steps, always blitz, drift too fast/too slow
Attack- always knock on, pass poorly to left or right, never pass always take the ball in, take a long time to recycle once touch/tackle is made
As you can see there are numerous variations to the game, this will assist your players in working out opponents and developing and practicing strategies to expose and exploit weakness in opposition.
Donny
