Rugby backline moves from a scrum: the miss pass, and when not to use it

What the miss pass is for

Ask a group of sixteen-year-olds why they threw a miss pass and most of them will say "to get it wide quicker". That is the wrong answer, and it is why the move breaks down.

A miss pass exists to take a defender out of the game. A drift defence works by having each defender push out onto the next attacker, so the whole line slides towards the touchline and arrives at your winger with an extra man. Skipping a receiver means the defender marking that receiver has nobody to drift onto: they are stranded inside the ball, and the numbers outside are suddenly even or better.

It follows that a miss pass thrown backwards and deep achieves nothing at all. The defence drifts in the time the ball spends in the air. The move only works if the ball travels across the field rather than back down it, which is why the two passes before it matter more than the miss pass itself.

Nine to ten, ten misses two

The simplest version, and the one worth having: scrum-half to fly-half, fly-half straightens and misses the inside centre, and the outside centre catches it with the winger arriving on his outside shoulder.

Coaching points, in the order they go wrong:

• The fly-half steps up before passing. One step forward holds the inside defender. Drifting sideways while passing hands the drift defence exactly what it wants.
• The inside centre still runs. He is not receiving, but if he stops running the defender covering him is free to drift immediately, and the whole point is lost.
• The outside centre catches it going forward. Catching it standing still means passing it standing still, and then the winger receives the ball with nowhere to go but the touchline.
• The winger comes from depth. Arriving flat is arriving into a tackle.

When not to run it

Inside your own twenty-two. A miss pass is a long ball across your own line, and an intercepted miss pass inside your twenty-two is seven points. Take the contact, get the ball, go again.

Off slow ball. The move needs the defence to still be reacting to the scrum. If the scrum-half has had to dig the ball out and your fly-half is receiving under pressure, the defence is already set and organised — the outside centre will be caught by two players and you will have lost fifteen metres of field.

When your winger is your best player and he is on the other side. Obvious, and still the most common mistake in schools rugby: the move is run to the side it was practised on rather than the side with the space.

The variation that comes next

Once a defence is drifting hard to cover the miss pass, the inside centre stops being a decoy and becomes the strike runner: same shape, same first two passes, but the fly-half gives it short to the twelve running back against the drift. It is the same move with the pass taken back, and it is worth having precisely because you have already trained the picture.

Do not coach both in the same session. The players need to run the miss pass badly a few times before the short option means anything to them.

Putting it in front of the players

Open the move in the rugby play designer, move the backline to your own players' names and starting positions, and send the animation. Rugby moves are almost impossible to explain on a whiteboard because the timing is the move — a static diagram shows five players in a line and hides the one thing that matters, which is who is running when.