Rugby practice plan template

A rugby session with a clock beside it

Rugby training runs over. A drill goes well, the players want one more go, and the game at the end, which is what most of them came for, ends up as five minutes in the dark. A plan with a start time beside every block tells you, while there is still time, that you are behind.

So this template is a run sheet. Each block has its length and the minute it starts, counted from the first whistle, with a tick box to mark it done and the coaching cue printed under each drill. It prints on one page, with lines at the foot for notes.

What is in the plan

It is the plan the practice plan maker opens on for rugby:

• a five-minute team talk;
• a fifteen-minute warm-up of easy laps and dynamic stretches;
• catch-pass in lines, four players running up the pitch in a staggered line and moving the ball along it at pace;
• the 2v1 draw and pass, where the carrier runs at the defender's inside shoulder until they commit, then passes flat to the support runner;
• a water break;
• a twenty-minute scrimmage, so the passing is tested against defenders;
• a cool-down.

It runs about an hour and a quarter, which fits most club and school training slots with time to put the cones out and collect the balls.

The cues that matter in rugby

Both drills are about depth. A pass that travels towards the opposition's dead-ball line is a throw forward (Law 11), and the other team gets the scrum, so players running at pace have to pass flat or slightly back. That is only easy if the receiver is already a step deeper than the passer, which is why catch-pass in lines starts from a stagger and the cue is hands up early, catch it in front, and pass inside two strides.

In the 2v1 the timing is the skill. Pass too early and the defender drifts across to the support runner; too late and the carrier is tackled holding the ball. The carrier runs at the defender's inside shoulder to fix them, and the support runner stays deeper and wider until the pass comes. Both drills, and the scrimmage, can be played as touch or tag, so the plan works for the youngest groups as well. Contact, from the tackle to the scrum and the lineout, comes in step by step through the age grades, and each union sets its own rules for when, so check your union's age-grade rules before you add any of it.

Changing it

On paper, cross a drill out and write yours beside it, keeping its minutes so the later start times still hold. On screen, the edit button opens the practice plan maker with this plan loaded. Swap either drill for any of the rugby drills in the library, such as the 3v2 overlap or tackle technique, change the minutes, and print it again with every start time worked out. It is free and needs no account.

For match day, the rotation maker for rugby shares out the playing time fairly across your squad and prints the substitutions on one page.