Blog Post 4 – Exploiting space in a game situation (Rugby Union)

Often in game situations when the participants are on fixtures, they struggle to find ways to get through to score against the opposing team. I thought to implement the GROW Framework to try and resolve the problem, I started by identifying what the goal of the activity and that was how to find the best and most effective way to score in a game situation as that what they was struggling with in previous weeks.

My expectations of them achieving the goal wasn’t great as they haven’t been able to score plenty of points. I know these are the expectations as I have greater understanding of the participants from when i started with them back in October 2019. I then went on to identify the problem which was that they didn’t know the best way to score and was struggling to find ways to get through and make ground. The participants was taking the ball from the ruck and just giving it to the next person along the line until the defence caught up with them, therefore they had made no positive metres. I know this from my experience in rugby as I have been playing the sport since I was 4 years old and played consecutive seasons till this very day. I could’ve waited till the next session that i had with them to go over the problems that i had identified and created a session plan centred around building on the problem and turning into good. Such as playing game based activities and conditioned games to make the rules suit the objective of a certain skill or tactic. I instead went into the team at half time and tried explaining using my knowledge on rugby and suggested that they needed to exploit the space by running straight, drawing defenders in and passing the ball out wide where the space is. I specifically told the captain and the most knowledgeable participant, on rugby from my observations, to get to the first receiver so they could command my instruction. In the second half Richmond House School brought the game back and was in the lead, they scored every try out wide with various players and exploited the space like a suggested to them at half time.

I believed the talk at half time worked because they was struggling to find any way to score, so I calmly refreshed their minds of the technique of creating space which I know a few of them already knew down to having a great understanding of the participants, they play at the local rugby club where the P.E coordinator at the school coaches. I will now implement more of these game based ideas into my session plans as I have come to realise that the School really want the participants to focus on winning the fixtures, even though the LTAD Model (Balyi & Hamilton, 2004) suggests otherwise. I will stick to what the school expectations are and put this kind of coaching into my sessions.