Rugby kick-off plays: chasing and receiving restarts

What Law 12 asks of a kick-off

A kick-off starts each half, and a restart kick is taken the same way after every score. Under World Rugby Law 12:

• It is a drop kick, taken on or behind the centre of the halfway line.
• The kicker's team-mates must be behind the ball when it is kicked. If they are not, the receiving team chooses a re-kick or a scrum.
• The receiving team must be on or behind its 10-metre line, 10 metres from halfway, until the ball is kicked. If they are not, the kick is retaken.
• The ball must reach that 10-metre line. If it does not, the receiving team chooses a re-kick or a scrum. If an opponent plays it first, or it reaches the line and is blown back, play goes on.
• If it goes straight into touch, the receiving team chooses a re-kick, a scrum, a lineout or a quick throw.

The pitch in the plays below is drawn with the try line at the top and halfway at the bottom, and the dashed line is the 10-metre line, 10 metres from halfway. The kick-off is taken from the middle of the bottom edge. The rugby play designer draws the same pitch.

Play one: short to their forwards, and the chase

The most common kick-off in the game. The fly-half kicks it high and short, just past the 10-metre line, to where the opposition forwards are standing in a pod. Their jumper has to catch it going backwards, with your chasers arriving.

The chasers stand level with or behind the kicker, which on this picture means on halfway, and only leave when the ball is struck. Leaving early gives the other side a re-kick or a scrum. The best chaser goes straight at the catcher, because a jumper tackled as he lands cannot set up a maul, and the others spread across the field in a line so the catcher's scrum-half has nowhere to go.

A short kick-off wins its ball back only if it hangs in the air long enough for the chasers to compete. Count it: the chasers need about three seconds to cover 14 metres from a standing start, so practise a kick that stays up that long and lands on a spot, not a kick that goes as far as it can.

Play two: long into their 22, and a flat chase line

The other choice is to kick it long, deep into the opposition 22, and make them kick it back.

A long kick-off only works with a chase line. If one chaser races ahead of the others, the catcher runs round him and the line has a hole in it. So the chasers go up together, across the whole width of the pitch, with the wings on the outside. Faced with a flat line, the fullback has no space to run into and has to kick from deep, which gives the ball back to you closer to halfway than where it started. The kicker stops short and hangs back to cover that kick.

Play three: receiving a kick-off

Now the other side of it. Here your try line is at the top and the opposition kick from halfway at the bottom, so a pass towards the top is a pass backwards.

Start from the kick-off receive template: two pods of three forwards and a pair in the middle, all on or behind the 10-metre line, with the halves behind them and the back three deep. The jumper in the pod the kick goes to is lifted, catches it going back towards his own line, and gives it straight to the scrum-half. The scrum-half passes to the fly-half, who has stood deep in the pocket for exactly this, and he kicks long to touch.

The one thing to coach is the call. Every receiver shouts “mine” or “yours” while the ball is still rising, because two players going for the same kick-off is how a restart is knocked on. Then the lifters hold the jumper until he has the ball, and only then does he come down.

Practising them

The kick chase line drill is the chase in plays one and two without a ball, and the lineout throw and lift drill is the lift in play three. Add the scrum-half pass with the scrum-half pass off the base drill.

Sending it to your players

All three plays are live. Open any of them in the rugby play designer, put your own players on the numbers and send the link. For the set pieces after the restart, read the rugby lineout moves guide and the backline moves from a scrum guide.