Free rugby play designer

Lines that are actually where the lines are

Playmaker draws a 70 m by 50 m half of a rugby union pitch with the 22 m and 10 m lines measured, the try line as the edge of the field of play, the in-goal area shaded above it and posts 5.6 m apart with the crossbar in proportion.

Those lines are not decoration in rugby — they are the rules of the game. Whether a lineout is inside your 22, whether a kick is direct to touch, where a restart has to land: every one of those is a question about a line, and a whiteboard where the 22 is "about a third of the way up" cannot answer it. Here, the 22 and the 10 land on the pitch exactly where they land on the field, so a move drawn from a scrum on the 10 m line is drawn from the 10 m line.

What you can draw

• A shape. Place all fifteen, or start from a template — a 1-3-3-1 pod distribution, a seven-man lineout, an attacking backline from a scrum, a kick-off receive — and move what you want to change.
• Lines of running. Drag a player and the path becomes a timed run, so a switch, a loop or a decoy line hits the gain line when it is meant to.
• Passes. Tap the receiver and the ball goes to where they are at that point in the move — which is what makes a miss-two or a wraparound draw itself correctly instead of as a straight line to where somebody used to stand.
• The finish. Mark the scorer and the ball animates over the line.
• The opposition. A second team, drawn as squares, for the defensive line you are attacking or the ruck you are defending.

Set piece to first phase, in one picture

A lineout move is not the lineout — it is the throw, the lift, the transfer to the scrum-half and the three seconds after that, and coaches lose players somewhere in the middle of that sentence. Draw it as one sequence and play it back: seven forwards between the 5 m and the 15 m, the hooker on the touchline, the scrum-half receiving outside the 15, the backs stacked behind, and then the move itself running off the top.

The same applies to phase play. A 1-3-3-1 is a width map — one forward in each 15 m channel, two pods of three between them — and the reason it works is that there is always a pod on both sides of the ruck. That is obvious in an animation and invisible in a list of positions.

Defence, drawn honestly

Thirteen in the line at roughly 5 m spacing, a fullback sweeping, a winger in the back field — and two players nobody volunteers for, the pillars either side of the ruck. Playmaker's rugby defensive templates put those jobs on the picture first, because pillar and post are where tries are conceded and where a diagram is worth more than a talk. Draw the opposition's shape against yours, animate two phases, and the drift or the blitz you are asking for either holds together or does not.