Ed's Update

Drilling in the tackle

Wow – is it me or is it getting warmer rather than cooler?

Great to see all the kids back at Bramley Road yesterday with smiles on their faces. Good attendance from parents and siblings too although I imagine that had a great deal to do with the weather!! It was a tough morning for the players in the heat and to keep concentration levels up for 2 continual hours is a real challenge. The great thing is that they managed to do this and we saw some really good, running rugby and some impressive tackling.

The kids are starting to understand the breakdown more and all seem very enthusiastic when I tell them at the end that we are going to play “full rules”, however using the touch games at the beginning of the session allows us to keep some focus on passing, movement and alignment in a more free flowing game. As I picked out in last week’s mail shot we are keeping a very emphasis on support and the touch game we played was conditioned to get the kids understanding the importance of this.

Again we had some drills to remain focused on the tackle. It’s interesting to see a lot of very good tackling technique in the drills, yet when we move into the games the tackles from some get higher with more shirt grabbing. As a parent group I would urge you to keep emphasising the importance of tackling low both from a technical perspective but more importantly for safety. They all know that they must be tackling around the top of the thighs, hitting with the shoulder and wrapping the arms around. When watching the games these next few weeks, I’d like to see as much applause for a good tackle as for a well worked try!! A special mention to Charlie and Noah H for yesterday. We’ve seen a huge improvement in the tackling from both of them this season and they were very worthy trophy recipients!

The kids are now split up for the next two weeks and I wish them all the very best in all their games. They are all certainly equipped with all the knowledge of how the game should be played. However there is a certain amount of heading into the unknown in the next few weeks. As you’ll all be aware, we‘re very much a “Guinea Pig” year for the new RFU rules and we have to learn as we’re going along, rather than garnering advice from previous years coaches. Therefore the games will be very much open to the referee’s interpretation and the rules may be applied very differently from one referee to another. What this will mean is the kids will need to listen closely to what the referees are telling them before, during and after the games. Please assist us in talking to your kids about respecting the referees decisions and listening to their advice. This will be a great help.