The backline you get from a scrum, to scale
Rugby · Attack · 15 of your players
A scrum ten metres left of centre gives your backs forty-five metres of pitch to attack. This is the fifteen-player picture of that: eight bound in, seven fanned across the open side.
Opens on a rugby pitch with the shape already drawn. Free, no signup.
Eight bound, seven fanned
The scrum is set about 24 m in from the left touchline and 29 m out from the try line — around ten metres left of the middle, so the open side is the right and there is some 45 m of grass to play with. Loosehead prop, hooker and tighthead prop across the front, the two locks behind them, blindside and openside flankers on either flank, number 8 at the base. The scrum-half stands at the number 8's feet on the open side.
The backline is fanned rather than flat. The fly-half is 10 m off the gain line, and from there the inside centre, outside centre and right wing sit at roughly 8 m intervals, each a metre deeper than the last. The blindside wing stays home near the left touchline and the fullback is deepest, outside the centres. Ten metres of depth on the fly-half is the number worth defending in an argument: it is what buys the time for a pass to travel 8 m and still be caught running forward.
When to run it from here
This is the platform for a strike move — a set scrum, a settled defence and a full backline in front of you. Nothing else in the game gives you as much control over where every one of your players starts.
It is also the shape that flatters a slow pack. If the scrum goes backwards, the gain line moves with it and your fly-half's ten metres becomes seven. Sides who lose the collision should draw the backline a metre deeper here and accept the drift, rather than pretending the scrum will hold.
Three things worth an argument
- Depth is not a feeling. Set the fly-half's distance on the diagram and animate the first pass. A backline that is too flat looks fine standing still and never once does.
- The blindside wing. Leave them home or bring them into the line — draw both, and let the picture of an empty left touchline make the case.
- Where the fullback enters. Mark the run and time it, so arriving late outside the outside centre is a plan rather than an accident.
Open this one in the designer, draw your strike move on top of the fan, and animate it before you try to explain it to fifteen people in the wind.
Also known as
- scrum
- backline
- set piece
- attacking shape
Shapes to look at next
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Put the Attacking backline from a scrum on a pitch
It opens with the shape already drawn. Move the players your team does differently, drag the runs, and send your squad a link that animates.
Open in PlaymakerPage updated · Rugby play designer · All templates