Bouncing grubber kick

Clever rugby bouncing grubber kick. You use this for short to medium kicks past defenders into the space behind them. Your players run on, retrieve.

Start with the basics for good rugby

Be sure you have good handling skills

and you know your rugby kicking basics.

Bouncing grubber kick, rugby attacking play

It`s a good attacking ploy in the opposition half of the field.

You would normally carry the ball into and against the opposition.

Sometimes problems arise and the ball cannot easily be carried.

Or an opportunity arises to make grand rapidly by using a kick.

Say the opposing wing and centre have moved up quickly to smother your attack by making it difficult to run and pass to your outside backs.

This kick would be useful. By moving up quickly the opposition players have left undefended ground behind them.

You put in an angled bouncing grubber kick. You send it spearing through their defensive line rolling and bouncing into the undefended ground.

Timing their runs well your outside backs race past the advancing opposition.

They gather the ball well at one of the bounces and race away towards a two-on-one encounter with the opposition fullback.

It can be very useful.

How to do a bouncing grubber kick

A rugby ball will roll end-over-end keeping low some of the time and bouncing up from time to time. So you kick the ball to make it do this.

Bouncing grubber, start

... in progress

Hold the ball in two hands, ball pointing away and slightly downwards.

One hand spread over the ball, one hand below

Arm bent slightly, ball around waist height, remove lifting hand from under the ball.

As you step forward to kick, the ball drifts down towards your foot which is coming through to kick.

You bring your leg through at the same time as the ball arrives at foot height and Pow!

Slightly bent legged, toes pointed. You firmly strike the ball with the boney top part of your foot.

You strike the ball slightly above halfway up the ball. This sets the ball rotating forwards. Keep your knee forward to keep the ball low.

How hard you hit the ball depends on how far you want it to travel.

Follow through keeping your knee high and toes pointed.

You can vary how the ball behaves by varying where it first hits the ground.

Hitting the ground close to you would tend to make it a short high bouncing kick.

Hitting the ground further away from you would tend to make it a longer rolling kick with a few bounces.

Practice this kick, experiment

Practice frequently.

Use two balls. One to practice the kick, the other as a target

Use any method to move one ball 20 to 35 metres. This is your target.

Now use use a bouncing grubber kick to put the rugby ball close to or past the first one.

It doesn`t have to stop at the target, just going past close bye is good.

Your main aim is to get the ball rolling end-over-end and rearing up from time to time - which makes it easy for chasers to gather at full speed.

Using the target gives you plenty of feedback about whether or not you are accurate and when you have the distance right.

Main points

• good handling skills required
• place the ball downwards onto your foot

• ball lengthways, in line with pointing foot
• knee forward, toes pointed downwards

Make sure you can do the rolling grubber as well. there are many parts of these two kicks which are the same but they produce vastly different ball behaviour and are for very different purposes.

And remember the other kicks, follow the link for all the details.