Which decisions in attack you can make before the match, and how to train the ones you can't.
By Etienne Ferrat · about 16 minutes to read, then 15 on your own
You get the ball in midfield with a defender coming and a teammate outside you, and for half a second you're working out what to do. By the time you've worked it out he's on you, so you carry into him, and walking back you can see the pass was on the whole time.
At that speed nobody really works it out. The players who get it right have usually seen the picture so many times that the first thing they notice is the right thing. But a lot of rugby is slower than that, and in the slow moments you can have your answer ready before the match starts.
The chapter in one line
Plan the moments that give you time, and train your eyes for the ones that don't.
How to use thisRead the pictures, then start the video drill in part 4 this week, because that's the part with the best evidence behind it. After your next match, come back to part 3 and write one plan from it.
1
Two speeds of decision
When rugby union players were asked after matches how they'd made each decision, the answer depended on how much time they'd had. With time, like at a scrum or in slower open play, they thought it through using what they knew. With none, like in the tackle or at the breakdown, they went on instinct and took the first thing that was there.
So this chapter has two tools. For the moments with time you write a plan in the form "if I see this, then I do that", and you write it before the match. For the moments without, a plan is too slow, so you train what your eyes pick up, and that's the video drill in part 4.
What the research says about both, and who it was done on, is near the bottom. The short version is that the video drill is well supported and the plans are a reasonable bet.
In each picture you're the yellow player attacking up the page, and the ruck and your 9 are at the top with everybody else behind the ball. A solid line is a pass or a kick and a dashed line is somebody running. Every read carries one of two marks.
Plan ityou usually have time to see it comingTrain itit happens too fast for a plan
He's drifting early
The pass is coming from your 9 and the man opposite you is already sliding out. That opens the gap on his inside, and he can't come back into it with any power.
1
The defender opposite you is drifting early, with his hips turned to the touchline
Take it flatter and run square at his inside shoulder. He either stops drifting or you go through.
Train it
There's more of you than them
You count it while the ball is still in the ruck. The first defender is on your first receiver, so outside the ball it's three of you against two of them, and the ball goes through the hands to the free man.
2
You count more of you than them outside the ball, before it reaches you
Catch and pass within three steps and don't run a move. If you straighten into your man first, you usually give them the time to slide across.
Plan it
Their winger has come up
Their winger has stepped up level with the line, so nobody is behind him and their fullback is a long way off. Your winger starts behind you and chases, and the kick only has to land in the area.
3
Their winger has stepped up flat in front of you
The space is behind him, so kick in behind for your winger to chase. If he sits back and stays connected, pass.
Train it
They've folded round
You've played two phases the same way and their defenders have folded round the ruck with you, which leaves two of them on the short side against three of you. So the ball comes back against the grain.
4
You've gone the same way two or three phases and they've folded round with you
Check the short side. If there's more of you than them back there, call it to your 9 and get there. If it's one of you against several of them, leave it.
Plan it
2
Eight more reads
These follow the same shape and none of them belongs to one position. The bold line is what you see and the line under it is what you do.
When you've got time
5
The ball is slow and their line is set and looking at you
Leave it with the forwards and look again at the next ruck, because a set line coming forward is a bad time to try something.
Plan it
6
There's a prop or a lock in their line next to a back
Ask for the ball and run at the gap between the two of them, because that's usually where a line comes apart.
Plan it
7
They've rushed up hard on every phase so far
Next phase, don't drop deeper, because that's what a rush wants. Stand flat with a short option on your hip, or put it on the ground in behind them.
Plan it
8
The referee's arm is out for advantage
That's the moment for the risky kick, the chip or the cross-kick, because if it doesn't come off you go back for the penalty.
Plan it
When you haven't
9
The defender opposite you has squared up and is sitting on you
Pass. You've fixed him, so let it go before he gets to you.
Train it
10
It's a two on one and you've got the ball
There are two ways to do it and it depends on the situation and on you. Some players keep their eyes on the defender and let the ball go the moment he turns in. Others check him once and then look at the space in front of their support runner. Try both at training and keep the one that works for you.
Train it
11
The numbers are even
Straighten up. Take one step at your man's inside shoulder before you pass, so he can't slide onto the next one.
Train it
12
A teammate breaks the line
Sprint to his inside shoulder and call for it, because the cover pushes him out and the inside pass is the one that's open.
Train it
With the ball in your handsDon't run through this list on the pitch. In a study with athletes, the ways of deciding that produced fewer options led to better and more consistent choices, so in a match you take the first thing you see that's on and you commit to it. The list is for learning the pictures at home.
It won't come off every timeIn the professional game, a former Ireland centre has said that a ball player who picks the right runner four or five times in ten is already creating plenty of chances. So a read that works about half the time is probably a good read, and I wouldn't throw it out after one bad one.
3
Build your own
Those twelve are borrowed, and they're a good start. But the plan you'll probably trust most is one you wrote from your own match, so do this the morning after, when you've calmed down and you can still see it. If you're also doing chapter 4's review, use the same three moments for both.
Pick three decisionsThree times in your last match where you had the ball in attack and it went wrong or went nowhere. One line each is enough, like "took it off 10 standing still and got hit behind the gain line". If nobody filmed it, the ones that annoyed you are the ones you'll remember anyway. Three is plenty.
Ask if you had timeFor each one, ask whether you saw it coming or whether it happened all at once, and mark it T for time or N for none. A slow ruck, a set piece, a restart and the few seconds after your own mistake are usually T. A defender arriving as you catch the ball is N.
Go back one secondFreeze it just before the ball got to you and write what was there to see, mostly the hips of the defender opposite you and how close he was, and then the numbers outside the ball. If you can't say, you probably weren't looking, and then your plan is about the look: "If the ball is in the ruck and I'm in the line, then I look at the man opposite me before I look at my 9."
Turn one T into a planFirst say what would have been better, out loud: "If I'd called the short side, we had three on two." Then point the same picture at the next match and write it: "If we've gone the same way twice and they've folded, then I call the short side." In one lab experiment, people who named how their last go could have been better and then made a plan improved more than people who only made the plan.
Send the N's to the drillA no-time moment doesn't get a plan. Write the picture in three words, like "drifting, gap inside", and go looking for it in part 4, because you get quicker at seeing a picture by seeing it more often.
If you only write oneI'd make it the plan for after a mistake, because that's the use the sport studies support best. In the tennis study at the bottom of this page, the plans were for moments when a player's head goes, like getting angry or losing concentration. Something like: "If I knock on or throw a bad pass, then I say 'next job' and go and find it."
Too vague
Usable
If there's space, I attack it
If we've gone the same way twice and they've folded, then I call the short side
If I make a mistake, I stay calm
If I knock on, then I say "next job" and go and find it
How to word a plan
This part comes from the research on if-then plans. Most of it was done on students, and on things like eating and exercise, so take it as a guide and nothing stronger.
A
Keep the words "if" and "then" in it
Across hundreds of tests, plans written as "if this happens, then I do that" did better than plans that only said when and where somebody would do something.
B
Make the if one thing you can see or hear
In a driving game, people who planned for one exact road sign crashed less without slowing down. People who planned for "a dangerous situation" did no better than people who only had the goal of driving well. It was one lab study, but it matches what "if there's space" does to you on a pitch.
C
Make the then which action, and leave out how
When people added how they'd do it, or for how long, the effect of the plan roughly halved. And young volleyball players who made plans about their serving technique served worse to begin with, before it came back. So plan the choice and leave your technique alone.
D
No "because" on the line
In two experiments, adding the reason to an if-then plan cancelled the benefit of having the plan. The researchers think it puts you back into weighing things up. So work out why before you write it, and keep the reason off the line.
E
Say it once, and carry one at a time
Plans that people repeated to themselves once did better than plans they never repeated, and more repeats added nothing, and neither did picturing it. Most tests used a single plan and those did best on average, and plans that people kept going back to did a bit worse. The researchers call some of those comparisons messy, so hold them loosely.
4
Ten to fifteen minutes on your own
This is the part of the chapter with the best evidence behind it, and it's for the reads marked train it. You need your phone and any full match. Highlights are no good for this, because they only show you the plays that came off. This is the short version, and chapter 7 has the whole method, with where to pause and how to make it harder as the weeks go.
Pause and predict
Put on any full match and skip to open play. Your own match is better if somebody filmed it.
Pick one player to be, either the one in your position or whoever is first receiver.
Pause when he's about to act, which is usually as the 9's hands go on the ball or as the ball carrier gets a step from the line.
Say out loud, inside about three seconds, what happens next and where the space is. Commit to it, because guessing in your head and then agreeing with the video doesn't count.
Press play and mark it right or wrong.
If you were wrong, rewind once and say what was there to see, in three words. "Hips turned out", or "nobody at the back".
Do about twenty clips, which takes ten to fifteen minutes, and write down how many you got.
Twice a week, do chapter 7's standing version, where on pressing play you take the first two steps of whatever you called.
How you know it workedYour score out of 20, written down every session in the log in chapter 7. Do it three times a week for four to six weeks, and change the footage every couple of weeks so you aren't remembering the clips. It's working if the score climbs on footage you haven't seen before, and if the same missed cue stops turning up in your three-word notes.
What the research says about this drillStopping a clip just before something happens, committing to an answer, then playing it to see if you were right is one of the better-tested ways to train how you read a game. A 2024 summary of 12 small studies found it improved anticipation on video tests and on field tests, in sports from tennis and cricket to rugby league. In 16 top-level women footballers, twelve 15-minute sessions over four weeks improved their decisions in a small-sided game. In one small study of club rugby union players, six weeks of video-based training improved a reactive agility test by about 13 percent compared with normal training alone. And in basketball, players who trained on clips made better decisions afterwards than players who spent the same sessions watching games. The caution is that these are small studies, and very few of them checked what happened in a real match.
+
My three plans
Three rows, one for each kind of moment where a plan has a chance, and they save on this phone as you type. Write a plan once, say it to yourself once, and tick it when the moment has come up in a match and you did what you wrote. The round button marks the one you're taking into your next match, and only one row can have it. This is a card for before the match, and on the pitch you don't run through it.
1
Before the ball
2
When there's time
3
After a mistake
+
Count this in your next match
Count thisOf all the times you got the ball in attack, how many times had you looked at the defence before the pass was on its way to you? Write both numbers down in the changing room, because by the evening you'll probably have forgotten half of them.
+
Who to watch
Player
What to watch
George Ford
Put on England against Argentina from the 2023 World Cup and ask why that option every time he gets the ball. His father Mike Ford has put it at around 100 decisions a match, and the morning after they go through the two they'd have made differently, with George giving his reasons first. That's part 3 of this chapter, done by a Test 10.
Finn Russell
Pause as he catches it and look at the gap between him and the nearest defender. He takes it flat and at pace so the defender has to show what he's doing. Then count how long the ball stays in his hands.
Jamison Gibson-Park
His head on the way to the ruck, and how often the ball then goes back to the short side against the grain.
All of them are half-backs, and that's on purpose, because they get the ball more than anybody, so you see more decisions in ten minutes of watching.
+
What the research says
The reads in this chapter come from rugby. The if-then plan comes from psychology, where it's called an implementation intention, and the video drill comes from sport science. Most of that research was not done on rugby players, so each time I've said who it was done on.
Rugby players say how they decide depends on how much time there is
That's the study from part 1. It was 16 university and second-tier professional union players, talking over video of their own matches. It's what players said afterwards, so it isn't a perfect record of what went on in their heads.
If-then plans help people do what they meant to do, and the effect is small
That's from the biggest summary so far, which pooled 642 tests. More than half were on university students, and most were about health habits like eating and exercise, or tasks in a lab. The effect was bigger in the lab than in real life, and once the researchers allowed for tests that never got published, it came out small.
In sport the evidence is thin, and it's clearest for when your head goes
One review found 11 experiments, mostly small and mostly on students. About half found an improvement, and the clearest were plans for nerves and frustration, in league tennis players and in students putting a golf ball or throwing darts. In the tennis study, 107 players in Germany wrote four plans the day before a match and were rated as playing better than players who only set a goal, by themselves and by a coach or teammate who didn't know their group. None of the 11 tested a plan for a tactical decision in open play.
In a two on one, experienced players look at the space
Ten regional-level union players and ten beginners ran live two on ones wearing an eye tracker. The experienced players looked more at the space in front of their support runner, and the beginners spent about half their looking time on the defender. The experienced group scored 29 tries to 14. It's one small study, but it's why read 10 is worded the way it is.
Professional rugby players read where the weight is going
In a virtual reality test, professional players judged which way an attacker would step from where his body weight was going, and people who had never played were fooled by his shoulders and his foot. That was defenders reading an attacker, so it's the mirror of what you're doing, but it's a fair reason to look at a defender's hips before anything else.
Looking before the ball arrives goes with completing more passes
That's from 27 Premier League footballers over about 9,500 possessions. The link was small, and it only shows that the two go together. It's football, where the ball arrives at your feet, so in rugby the look has to happen before the pass is on its way to you.
Brain-training apps and reaction-light boards are oversold
A review of 43 studies on the commercial ones found only one that tested a real sporting task. So they probably train you at the thing on the screen, and there's very little to say they train your rugby.
Where this comes from
The reads come from what professional players and coaches have said on the record, mainly Dan Biggar, Danny Cipriani, Brian O'Driscoll, Finn Russell and Ben Smith, and from the analysis of Squidge Rugby, RugbySlate, The Rugby Site, Rugby Coach Weekly and RugbyPass. What Mike Ford said about George Ford's decisions is from Gavin Mairs in The Telegraph, 15 September 2023.
Gollwitzer, P. M., Wieber, F., Myers, A. L., & McCrea, S. M. (2010). How to maximize implementation intention effects. In Agnew, Carlston, Graziano & Kelly (Eds.), Then a Miracle Occurs, Oxford University Press, 137-161.