Rugby: preseason fitness

Has anyone got any tried and tested preseason fitness drills aimed at 1st grade players

Has anyone got any tried and tested preseason fitness drills aimed at 1st grade players

I have just started helping our head coach with under12's team. He wants to retire and has put me forward to be head coach next season. I am a little worried on how i should aproach training with the boys, going to a full 15 a side team on a full pitch. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I have started an under 10s team up, and I would say about 8 from the 13 children I have , did not play rugby until about 6 months ago. Of these players, there seems to be a lot of potential, as we are scoring tries against teams, that very rarely concede tries.the problem I got with them, is that we are very poor at organising our selves in defense when the opposition has the ball, which does result in us conceding quite a few tries. We have some very good tacklers in the team. Can anyone offer some ideas on how I can get them to organise themselves? Thanks . Chris.

I coach an under16s Rugby League squad who are at premier division level, some of whom are lets say not very fit. Does anyone have a good pre-season conditioning plan/session we could slot in once or twice a week to get the lads fitter ?

Getting quite frustrated that my u10's are not using the space on the pitch and tend to bunch up. Despite various drills and game scenarios to force them to spread out and pass to someone in space they revert in any game to bunching up around the ball and taking it back into the thick of the opposition rather than looking left or right! Any ideas how to change their ways?

I coach under 8's and next season they will start contact. When am I allowed to start teaching them tackling skills? I sit january during their under 8 season or at the start of the under 9 season ?

My fowards seem afraid to ruck and stand around the ruck while in the way of the scrum half trying to get the ball out to the backs. They also don't support the ball carrier while he is being tackled. Please help me with any suggestions!!!

I'm coaching and reffing U11 rugby and one of my players is the definitive 'big lad'. His 'strength' is his size and his power, but last weekend he didn't seem to get reffed fairly. The opposition couldn't tackle him down, one on one and when another two joined in to make a mini maul, that didn't slow him down much either. The ref then let other people join in the (one sided) struggle to tackle him down, which seemed very unfair as A) it's outside the laws of U11 rugby,, B) it makes it nigh on impossible for him to offload, C) when he is brought to ground, he has 4-5 players all over him and he got pinged for 'holding on'. He is a recent arrival to rugby and it was our first game for a couple of months, so the situation hadn't reared his head before. We are keen that he learns all of the core skills of rugby and doesn't get used as a battering ram, but after seeing a pack of hyenas trying to pull down the big fella, something just didn't seem right to me.I'd be grateful for any thoughts and opinions.

Some of my U9s players, who are experiencing contact for their first season, are showing reticence in tackling - how do you coach or get through the fear factor/element?

What drills would anybody reccomend to encourage forward running in an u8s side,whilst keeping it fun?Some players tend to crab along the pitch.

Hi there, I was wondering thoughts on forward positions at the kickoff. Do you have the catchers deep so the are coming forward to meet the ball or have one deep and one short? For the pods do you have a "quick" pod made up of all three loosies and a lock and a "slow" pod made up of the front row and the lock or do you split them in two pods made up of a prop, a lock and two loosies and the other pod of a prop, a lock, the hooker and a loosie? Who would you tell to be the ball carrier, body movers and bridger? All thoughts welcome. CheersDave

I'm a new player trying to learn to play Scrum half. I have a general idea of how the game works having played back positions a few times. However, I'm confused about one thing (and this might be dumb but bear with me). The thing is, I'm pretty quick. I can usually make it to a ruck before the forwards have fully formed it. When this happens I don't really have a good sense of where to stand in order ot have good access to the ball but also avoid blocking other forwards coming in to ruck.  Usually I've already surveyed the field (to my newbie abilities anyway) and made a decision as to what I want to do with the ball, yelled the call on my way to the ruck, etc, so that puts me in a mindset that I REALLY want to be close to the ball so I can make it happen.  Should I just keep my distance instead until the ruck is fully formed? Where specifically should I be standing and how quickly should I get there? Thanks!