Offloads

Offloading in the tackle

Think back over the past season at how many times your team or an opposition team has made a great break through a player dominating the contact and having the ability to offload the ball to a supporting player. In NZ this is something that comes to players naturally and you will often see a midfielder dominate a tackler and have the ability to free arms and offload a pass. Maybe this is because league has such an influence in NZ and Australia and players are pulling some of the favourable plays they see from the NRL. Some coaches find this sort of play to be to “higher risk” and will not allow players to play this style of rugby.
However if you look at it from another perspective if you can develop this skill and work on the running lines of your support players maybe the reward will well and truly outweigh the risk. Recently I have brought a focus into our trainings around use of a fend and ball transfer with an add on of the offload in contact. The players really enjoyed it and elements were translated into how we played the game on the Saturday following. The keys I see to developing this as a weapon in your teams repertoire are:

Ball Carrier
Footwork in lead up to contact and ability to create and attack a weak shoulder.
Dominating the contact and keeping Feet alive in contact
Ball carried away from the tackler so players have the ability to free arms to pass the ball

Support Player
Eyes on ball carrier and identify if he is attacking defensive player on the inside or outside shoulder
Making a decision which channel to support in (inside or outside)
Head towards the ball carrier late to give defensive player little time to slide and cover the space
Communicate to ball carrier about where he is eg: short ball etc
Receive ball accelerate into space

There is a number of mini unit drills that can be done to develop this within your players but each step creates an individual skill execution and needs to be developed in an ongoing process to get the best result, as they say “Rome wasn’t built in a day”!

My thoughts are develop quality offload opportunities, develop quality support lines and communication you will end up with greater opportunities to score more points and ultimately win more games!