Rugby Coaching Blog | Professional Rugby Advice & Coaching

In practice, use proper first receivers most of the time and don’t get fooled into thinking that every player can play there.

Rugby utopia has it that all players should practise all positions and become multi-faceted. Unfortunately this is not possible and many training sessions suffer from this assumption. Putting a weaker decision maker in the pivot position, normally occupied by the fly half, leads to poor outcomes that reduce the effectiveness of your practices.

Identify your likely first receivers and use them in rotation in the demanding decision making exercises. In the meantime, players who aspire to this position will have plenty of opportunity to practise in less demanding exercises, like 3 v 2s.

Discriminate by judging how close to the game situation you are working towards. Exercises that work through phases should have the correct players in position in the first instance and then build from there. Sometimes a prop will be at scrum half, but this should be an accepted expection and not a common occurence.