Short-sided rugby games

It has been said that there is nothing in the middle of the road but dead possums and yellow lines. Where conditioning is concerned, I disagree. The longer I work with rugby athletes, the more I have come to favour a conditioning approach that finds the middle ground between SSGs and EO: conditioning drills CDs.

By CDs I mean specific match actions performed in a repetitive fashion, in very small groups no more than players , adhering to set loading parameters that coincide with the desired physical qualities. Just make sure they are reflective of the key sporting movements of your position and sport. For rugby, this will typically entail variations of sprinting and contact skills tackling, rucking, mauling, driving through contact etc. There is also scope to utilise position specific drills.

Here is an example of some contact based CDs my own athletes performed this pre-season. Drills were performed to target development of aerobic power: 60s of work, s of rest, working at 8RPE.

Athletes were coached on the key technical aspects of the skill before each rep and during the rest periods and encouraged to adjust their intensity to stay within the RPE guidelines:. I would argue that due to the smaller group sizes, there is actually a far higher number of game specific actions that can be practised and honed when performing CDs than SSGs.

Due to the more controllable nature of the CDs, there is also less likelihood that athletes will get sloppy in their technique and reinforce bad habits. There is also ample opportunity to tweak drills from rep to rep to explore different tactical approaches and address technical deficiencies in a focussed manner that is not possible with SSGs.

In comparison to EO, CDs offer a far better integration of the various areas of preparation, and they tend to be received far more favourably by players, because they can see the direct relationship between the drill they are practising and their sport. Are the loading parameters of the drills as easy to progress and control compared to EO? There is nothing that comes close to SSGs for the development of tactical awareness and decision making, for teaching players how to work alongside one another, and learn in a guided discovery environment; it is difficult to encourage players to be creative in tightly constrained activities like CDs or EO training.

In short I think they are good for the integration of all elements of training, and to express and utilise fitness. To me, EO is a great way to prepare or lay a base for other forms of training. I believe CDs best serve the coach as a transitionary training means; to build on the foundation created by EO in a time efficient manner, whilst developing technical and tactical preparation, before lastly learning how to put all the pieces together in SSGs.

Log in Subscribe. Small-sided games are games with a small number of players on each side, for example 3 v 3 or 5 v 5. The key point is that because there are fewer players, each player gets more touches of the ball , and there are many additional benefits.

Soccer Coach Weekly recommends the use of small-sided games as a key part of your coaching program, and as a subscriber you can access specially designed games, in a format that you can easily print and take to training. Alternatively you can buy all the games in printed or ebook format here. An example of a small-sided game being used to teach strikers to shoot. The games in the section below will help your players to improve on individual and team skills.

They are simple to set up, guarantee more player participation, with more passes attempted, and more goals scored. Allow your players to develop confidence and technique in this three-part session. Help your midfielders and forwards learn to beat the offside trap and stay onside.

Of course, kids don't start participating on 11 a side pitches until they reach the under 13 age group, but there is no looking back from there. This can be applied to every sport. Both forms of rugby are probably two of the most physically demanding sports you will likely take part in. This means that more enjoyment is being obtained and each induvidual is receiving more attention.

From a personal experience, it was always fantastic to go back to playing 5 and 7 a side once we were playing on an 11 a side pitch. The fast paced nature of the game and the numerous opportunities of scoring brought a shed load of excitement, something that can be lost on an 11 a side pitch if the game is flat or isn't going your way.

This could be one of the main reasons why many younger people decide to stop playing as they get older. We see it at the highest level of the game, players hardly touching the ball during a half or even the full 90 minutes, so it isn't a surprise when we see amateur players becoming demotivated when they start playing 11 a side. Lets not take anything away from 11 a side, at the best of times, it is arguably the most exciting sport in the world and most of the time its fantastic to play.

However, who doesn't love a good victory on a 5 or 7 a side pitch after you've finished your day at work, college or university? Take a look at an article we wrote, looking in depth at why kids decide to stop playing sport. One of the main reasons was because they didn't find it fun anymore, as well as them not being involved in the game. Making sessions and games fun is paramount to keeping children onboard with the idea of sport, short sided games allow everyone to be involved for most of the game, which therefore prevents a child from feeling left out becuase for whatever reason, he is being left out of the team.

Short sided games can - get more people playing. Having the time to play full length games is an underlining issue that most people have when they reach adulthood. This is a problem for grassroot clubs. Participation levels are dropping because people have so much choice, so sports must adapt to fit modern lifstyles.

That means the introduction of evening matches and getting plenty of teams playing on the same night would help adults carry on playing. Making these games exciting and approachable is only possible if clubs introduce short sided games. An article we published in October looked at the reasons why adults decided to quit sport. A certain way to eradicate this would be clubs adopting a greater number of short sided games.