Inside Line: Don't sneer — six-a-side touch rugby is fast, intricate and enhances crucial skills

Put your hand up if you have ever complained about your team’s inferior handling or inability to convert try-scoring chances after tight losses to either Australia or New Zealand.

Perhaps a poor pass stopped a runner in their stride and butchered a three-on-two. Then, at some stage in the game, those pesky Antipodeans struck with an attack that vindicated that old cliché that the Wallabies and the All Blacks are simply slicker when it comes to basic skills.

Keep your hand up if you have sneered at recent suggestions that rugby may, temporarily, need to limit contact and set-piece situations while the threat of Covid-19 lingers.

Sammie Phillips believes the coming months – and any special measures that shift full-contact rugby league and union towards the touch variant of rugby– will reap rewards if prejudices can be broken down.

“This is a great opportunity, in a terrible time, for us to promote our game as a way of providing a fuller skill-set for any type of rugby,” explains the head of elite performance at England Touch.

“It might enable rugby folk to concentrate on areas they have neglected and redress the balance between contact and non-contact skills.

“I feel like it’s too heavily contact-focussed at the moment and I know a lot of sports scientists agree that where we fall down in the northern hemisphere is with our technical skills because [in the southern hemisphere], they play games like touch as kids and develop those skills at a younger age.”

The first thing to establish is that touch, known as ‘touch football’, is an autonomous sport that should be distinguished from a mill-around warm-up activity.

A proper game sees six players on either side, split into three positional pairs – ‘wings’, ‘links’ and ‘middles’, to move from out to in. The defence must retreat seven metres following a touch and the attack gets six touches before a turnover.

The player at ‘dummy-half’, who receives a ‘roll-ball’ from the previous carrier, may run but concedes possession if they are touched before passing.

Australia won the men’s open final at the 2019 World Cup in Malaysia. This was the decisive score in a 4-3 win over New Zealand, finished acrobatically by Michael Law following a dart from Dylan Hennessey that fixes two men:

Note that Law had joined the attack with a trailing line like a blindside wing shortly after being rolled on as a substitute. Replacements are unlimited in touch. Crafty:

There are over 700,000 registered touch football participants in Australia, just under half of whom are female. Top-level tournaments are televised.

The scene in England is far smaller, but growing. O2 Touch, the Rugby Football Union’s initiative, has passed 35,000 players. The Rugby Football League has a separate one, too, with England Touch recruiting 16 representative sides – in mixed, men’s and women’s categories in various age bands – from both of those pools and wider.

Phillips, who has played at four of the nine Touch Football World Cups that have been staged since 1988, representing England Over-27s in 2019, would love to have more formal links with schools.

As Phil Kearns, the RFU’s coach development officer, points out, the sport can advance juniors on the way up while also retaining veterans eager to stay in some sort of rugby activity at the end of their careers.

David Ross, now Nottingham backs coach, spent two years as director of rugby at King’s College in Auckland where there is a touch programme in the summer that stands separate from the school’s 15-a-side set-up.

“As a layman, you might think kids just throw the ball about and play a bit of code,” he says.

“A lot of the skills – catch-pass, evasive running, defensive organisation – are similar, but touch is a sport in its own right.”

Back in 2014, clips of a 10 year-old Chicago Doyle playing touch, league and union stormed the internet and chalked up hundreds of thousands of views:

With one year left at King’s College, where Ross coached him in union, Doyle has represented New Zealand touch at under-16 level…

…and has an exciting future. Plunge down a YouTube rabbit hole and you will find touch football sizzle-reels from Kiwi star Nehe Milner-Skudder and league icon Shaun Johnson.

Clark Laidlaw, like Ross, is another Scot who found work in New Zealand. He moved over in 2008, initially for a development role in Taranaki. Via stints with Hurricanes – where “awesome” Milner-Skudder was a colleague – and back in the United Kingdom at London Irish, he succeeded Sir Gordon Tietjens as All Blacks Sevens head coach.

Schoolboy touch competitions in New Zealand, which have caused administrators to shift junior sevens tournaments to avoid calendar clashes and allow crossover players to feature in both, provide “a great little talent identification avenue” for Laidlaw, “especially for the playmaker-type players with footwork and passing ability”.

Elite touch, which is structured yet fast and mentally and physically challenging for all 12 people on the field, hones spatial awareness, athleticism and decision-making. Unsurprisingly, the best transfer those attributes.

“Ngarohi McGarvey-Black, Joe Webber, Regan Ware, Etene Nanai-Seturo are guys that come to mind straightaway,” says Laidlaw, rattling off four members of his current squad to have moved through the touch ranks.

“When I played sevens for Scotland, we had no idea about some of the off-the-ball movement in touch– the little fake cuts, the shows, getting the ball back off the same player, plays in and around the ruck that are similar to league.

“All of that has a huge influence on how we attack as a sevens team and I think it gives us a real point of difference.”

Before coronavirus halted the 2019-20 World Series, New Zealand were leading the ladder thanks to three tournament victories out of the six that were completed.

McGarvey-Black, previously a touch international, darted past two South Africa defenders to finish a crucial try in the Cape Town decider last December:

Another of his highlights, a 28-metre pass from 2018 that set up teammate Dylan Collier, could have come on the touch field:

Laidlaw, who witnesses the sport-mad sensibilities of his adopted nation every morning when he drops off his daughters at school in Mount Maunganui, believes that the most talented youngsters in the country have started to gravitate towards sevens because of its Olympic recognition.

Because New Zealand Rugby seems to genuinely value the format as a viable launch-pad towards the All Blacks, as Rieko Ioane demonstrated, there is a virtuous circle at play. Touch players can thrive in sevens and then jump into the 15-a-side reckoning.

Niall Williams, the sister of Sonny Bill, is another name highlighted by Laidlaw. She was a runner-up at the 2011 Touch Football World Cup before amassing a glittering haul of sevens trophies including a silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and gold ones at both the 2018 Commonwealth Games and the 2018 World Cup Sevens.

A rigid framework of six touches, with no contestable ruck, does lend itself to closer comparisons with rugby league. But touch can certainly enhance union as well.

Listen to Richie Mo’unga talk through this set-piece strike-move from last season, which would have been devised in harness with Brad Mooar:

A hole in Chiefs’ defensive line is manipulated by the off-the-ball movement of numerous players on either side of the scrum…

…and full-back Will Jordan is able to slice through from Ryan Crotty’s pass.

This is sort of deception is commonplace in touch rugby, as Laidlaw suggests. Watch this sequence of attack from the Australia Touch Football League this year:

Sydney Mets almost score in the far corner following an intricate pattern. The attacker in the number 11 jersey is the key man. Having taken the previous touch...

...he drops to the near side…

…before fading to the far side behind a hard-runner and receiving a pull-back pass:

In the end, the final cut-out pass goes astray, but this seems like a progression of blindside slide moves we have seen from union teams.

Here is a high-profile example with Joe Schmidt’s fingertips all over it. Against the All Blacks in 2018, Ireland centre Garry Ringrose slips around the breakdown after lining up on the inside of a three-man pod of forwards:

One-two exchanges between the dummy-half and the player that has rolled the ball back are prominent in touch:

Aaron and Ben Smith took this idea, designed to tease the guard defender out of position, to the international arena…

…and sparked a trend. Dan Leavy and James Ryan bamboozled Saracens two years ago with the exact same ploy:

Phillips often take inspiration from NFL running plays when pondering innovative moves, bringing to mind Eddie Jones’ theory that international rugby has become like American football in its demand for precision over the first three phases following scrums and lineouts.

Touch can help players understand and improve support lines prior to contact. Although significant first-phase breaks like this are fairly rare in union…

…plenty of worthwhile play occurs behind the gain-line.

Wales ran this intricate loop against Italy in their first match of the 2020 Six Nations, Dan Biggar picking up a second touch from Hadleigh Parkes beyond George North’s decoy angle. Josh Adams arcs around and  Wales have their entire back three in the far 15-metre channel:

Here is a similar, if more spontaneous, wrap from the women’s National Touch League in 2018:

Back to 15-a-side Test rugby and South Africa manufactured a blindside for Faf de Klerk without forming a ruck that year against England:

This piece of art from Otago against North Harbour in 2014 follows a similar principle:

Kylie Hutchison is England Touch’s most-capped player. Ironically, she grew up in Melbourne before moving to Queensland in her early teens. Many of Australia’s gold-medal winning women from 2016, including poster girl Charlotte Caslick, played in the same tournaments.

Hutchison, who now represents London Scorpions Touch Club after relocating, speaks eloquently about “comprehensive playbooks” and building attacking sequences. Teams may, for example, attempt to strike on the third and fifth touch after running a play designed to isolate and exploit a defender.

“You look at ‘cues’, which is just the body positions of defenders,” Hutchison says. “If a defender keeps turning their hips inwards, you’ll know there should be space on their outside and vice versa.

“If a defender keeps turning out, you know there will potentially be space on their inside past their heels.”

As well as backline alignment and synergy, she also identifies passing off the floor as a skill that is improved with time in touch – something that is increasingly valuable in the 15-a-side as a means of capitalising on quick ruck ball.

Scanning and picking up cues from defenders is vital and you get a lot of practice because, in Hutchison’s words “with just six players, everyone is accountable”.

“You don’t necessarily call a move in a game of touch,” Phillips adds. “You’ll call a first part and then assess your options off the back of it according to what the defence is doing.

“I think rugby could learn a lot from cueing decisions rather than pre-setting them. If you call something and the defence doesn’t play ball, you are running something that isn’t going to work.

“By calling more reactive plays that are less fixed and based on defensive cues, you’d be more successful in breaking down defences.”

Decorated figures from league, such as Paul Deacon and Sean Long, are being whisked into Premiership coaching teams in order to refine these nuances.

If attacks in union are limited by the least skilful handlers, touch games in training are an obvious way to raise that ceiling.

“In a touch game, you will have lots of situations like a three-on-two, using up a good share of the players on the field,” Ross explains.

“If you get to hone that problem so regularly, then you are more likely to be more efficient when you encounter it in 15-on-15.”

Defensive decision-making is another area that benefits.

“We talk about ‘corner’ and ‘shut’ defence,” Hutchison says. “That would be similar to ‘drift’ or ‘rush’ defences [in 15-a-side].”

Think of wings such as Anthony Watson, Cheslin Kolbe, Makazole Mapimpi or Liam Williams jamming in to shut the door. Those plays are applicable to touch:

Clearly, contact skills and the set piece – not to mention kicking – remain fundamental aspects of rugby union. South Africa, the most combative team on the planet, are deserved world champions.

A surge in popularity for touch, and maybe some crossover stars reaching the professional ranks, might sharpen attacking instincts. Laidlaw does insist that home nations are catching up and proposes Henry Slade and Jack Nowell as players who have been coached to be intelligent ball-players.

As Australia and New Zealand dominated the 2019 Touch World Cup, contesting nine of the 11 finals and sharing all categories between them in an eight-three split, England came third overall. Manchester is playing host to next summer’s World Youth Cup, comprising under-18 tournaments in male, female and mixed categories. Phillips hopes it will be a springboard.

“Touch is cooler in Australia and New Zealand,” she says. “Over there, games will start up at barbecues or in playgrounds.

“Here, you’ll get a group of kids around a rugby ball and they’ll kick it. I’m forever shouting: ‘Show me how far you can pass the ball! What about that one out the back of your hand?’”

“There’s still a bit of a cultural barrier. But I want to get past it.”