One of the defining features of our game is multiplicity of skills and attributes required of the players at the top level. Rugby encompasses power, strength, speed, passing, kicking, tackling and tactical nous, and it is a rare player indeed who has all of these things in one package. Today, we will discuss one of the rarest and most valuable of those attributes: speed.
Speed is something that is valued by those who have it and desired by those who don’t. It is priceless on the rugby field. The ability to motor through a half-gap, chase down a kick, line-break or intercept or run from depth on a great line to score a long range try are skills that are greatly prized in rugby. Ours is, at its core, a running game, and speed is simply vital.
Acceleration v. Sustained Pace
There are really two types of pace that you may find in a rugby player: short bursts, also known as acceleration; and sustained top end speed. They’re equally useful; finding both in one player is rare.
First, acceleration. Put simply, this is the ability to reach high speed rapidly and over a short distance. It’s a skill that players who spend most of their time close to the ruck, such as the half-back, five-eighth and inside centre, want to have. Players with rapid acceleration have the ability get through a half-gap and beat their opponent one-on-one. We often see this with a halfback sniping on the blind side of a scrum or ruck and creating a half-break for the support players to exploit. For the inside backs, acceleration, combined with the art of deception in the form of a step or dummy, puts doubt in the minds of the defenders and makes them stop or lose balance. At that point the fast feet of the attacking player take him through the gap and he is away.
Acceleration requires the legs to be moving as fast as possible, and calls for strength in the lower limbs and torso to push off and build forward momentum. Body angle (leaning slightly forward) and use of the arms are crucial to building speed rapidly. Being on your toes (that is, not flat-footed) is also important. It’s very difficult to accelerate when you are on your heels, and this is where positional smarts help get a player in a position to challenge the line. A player’s feet should be almost clawing at the ground and pushing it out behind him to get to top speed quickly.
Players in Australia who have this burst of speed include Will Genia, Quade Cooper and especially James O’Connor. Their ability to evade tacklers in heavy traffic call equally on their powers of deception and acceleration. That turn of pace is a great weapon against defences, especially when you have tired bodies or mismatches in the line (for example, an inside back lined up against a bigger, slower tight forward).
The other type of speed is sustained top level pace. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but put simply, this is about being able to run at high speed and sustain it over a longer distance (20 to 40 metres). Players who are positioned wider on the field make the most use of this kind of pace, especially the outside backs. These guys are the ones who play on the wing or fullback during the winter and are sprinters in the summer. They use their top end speed to run around the opposition defences or hit an inside or short ball from one of the play-makers after coming from depth. They generally have a relaxed and correct running technique and stride out more.
Running in this manner is more upright, with greater leg extension (longer striding), rotation of the hips and standing a bit taller. This purer running style comes with a few risks in rugby, like losing the ball in contact or being unable to offload or pass at pace. It’s not enough to be quick in these situations; good hands are needed too. Trying to protect the ball is also a bit unnatural for a sprinter, as they would normally not be worried about anything else but going as fast as possible in a straight line.
The guys with the high top end pace are tremendously exciting to watch, and in that category currently would be players like Rod Davies and Lachlan Turner. We’ve seen examples over the last few seasons of these guys hitting the line at pace and burning off the defence.
Not Just for the Backs
Pace isn’t only important in the backline. Having a burst of acceleration or sustained pace in the forwards is also tremendously valuable. Whether it’s one of the big boys (like a prop or an eight) building up momentum to smash through the line, or a back rower or lock running a support line, speed is still a great thing to have. In the forwards, especially among the taller players, you are more likely to see the sustained top level speed than acceleration, mainly because those big bodies take a bit longer to get going (yours truly can attest to that). However, once in full flight these boys can be very hard to stop. So investing in sprint training for the pack is an important part of modern elite training..
Guys who exhibit this kind of pace amongst the forwards in Australia would be Scott Higginbotham and Sam Wykes, who both really motor for players of their size and bulk. Some of their line breaks and the tries they’ve scored running support and chasing kicks are testament to that.
Nature v. Nurture
It’s often asked: are players born with the innate talent to be quick or can it be taught? The answer, as usual, lies somewhere in between.
A player can be endowed with physical gifts, such as long legs for striding out, a strong torso and buttocks for generating the power needed to run fast, and more fast-twitch muscle fibres to generate acceleration. However, none of that does any good unless the right training is undertaken. Technique is just as important as physique, as is training in the right manner to gain speed. It’s no good being a big strong bloke if you are wasting all of that power by running incorrectly. This undoubtedly why the Waratahs hired the former Australian champion sprinter Matt Shirvington to tutor the squad in better running technique.
While you can’t make a poor runner into a world beater, you can take nearly any runner and make them better. Training techniques such as heavy weights, plyometrics, stretching, intervals and Fartlek (or speed play) can all help considerably, as will working on the core running action.
Some Examples
All of the above is best illustrated with some footage. In the first part of the video, we see a man whose pace has been much maligned. It’s not my intention to pick on poor old Tom, but he illustrates what I mean about technique: his chest and shoulders are moving around too much and his knees and hips aren’t high enough, in my opinion. Others may disagree with this of course. Later in the video we see what looks like some evidence of improvement. His action is more relaxed, he’s a bit more upright and his hips are rotating a bit more. He’s getting more value out of each rotation with better knee drive.
The other example I’d like to point out is that of Rod Davies. He has a beautifully natural running action. He’s relaxed, up on his toes, head relatively still, hips rotating slightly and he’s running tall, with a slight arching of the back. It’s an absolute joy to watch when he’s in full flight. Whether or not he’s a better total rugby package is not really the point in this case, but he is a very good sprinter. No surprise then to find out that he was a champion GPS sprinter.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0wLGHyotSo[/youtube]
Last, let’s look at the example of James O’Connor. Throughout this clip, you’ll see time after time, he gets his legs moving quickly to accelerate through a gap or offload to a support player. Just ignore the knock-ons ;-)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJapxqS3-pE[/youtube]
