Kicking and strategy

Why kick

The corpus gives one underlying reason, and it fits in a word: the trade. You kick to exchange possession for territory and pressure when field position is poor, or to contest a high ball with an up-and-under. So it is never a last-resort reflex: it is a decision that answers the position on the pitch and whether or not a chase exists that can put the receiver under pressure.

Two intentions separate every rugby kick. Occupy — push the opposition away from their lines, get out of your own half, find touch. Contest — put the ball back into play above the defence to win it back. A kick that serves neither is a ball handed over for nothing.

The four kicks and their jobs

The corpus names four kicks, each with a job and a moment. The table sorts them as they are defined — and above all, it does not mix up the territory kick with the contest kick.

The box, played from the ruck. The box-kick is the scrum-half’s kick: he strikes it from the base of the ruck, over his own pack, high enough for his wingers — or the No.9 himself — to contest it as it drops. Its nature is to be contestable: it is not a deep clearance, it is a way of giving the ball up in order to take it straight back.

The up-and-under, to contest in the air. The up-and-under puts the ball very high above the defence so the chase arrives level with the receiver: an organised aerial duel. In the corpus, the drill that trains it is rug-chandelle, placed at U17 and senior — the aerial contest assumes a safe catch and a synchronised chase you do not ask of young players.

“The chase makes the kick”

This is the sentence that governs everything else, and the corpus states it plainly: kick only as far as the chase can pressure — an uncontested kick is just gifting possession. In other words, the distance of the kick is set not by the boot but by the chase: if the chasers cannot reach the receiver before he reorganises, the kick has simply given the opposition twenty metres, with the ball.

The practical consequence is sharp. A box or an up-and-under are tuned to the hang time: high enough, short enough, for the chase to arrive as it drops. A punt is tuned to what it neutralises: you send it to touch, or into space where the returner has no option, precisely because it will not be contested. Kicking long with no chase is the opposite of territorial strategy — it is a gift.

Territory, occupation and strategy

Kicking sits inside rugby’s phase logic: go forward, win quick ball, then move the point of attack. When that logic is blocked — poor field position, nothing in front, pressure on the ball-carrier — the kick becomes the tool that hands the problem to the other side. You give up the ball, but you also give up the territory they now have to defend.

Which kick to choose is read off the defence. Against a fast-rushing line (a blitz / rush defence), the space is behind: that is the moment for the grubber, which slips under the line and rolls in behind the defenders. Against a defence that drifts outward and leaves air overhead, that is the moment for the up-and-under or the box, which put the ball back into play where the defence has emptied. In the corpus, the occupation decision is trained at senior level with rug-jeu-au-pied-occupation: not “how to strike”, but “when, where and why”.

The restart, a weapon — Sevens above all

The kick-off and restarts are a special case of the kicking game, and this is where the two formats of rugby diverge most.

In Sevens, seven players on a full-size pitch means huge space: possession retention and winning the restart are decisive, and every turnover is punished at once. So the contested restart and its chase are not a footnote of the laws — in Sevens they are one of the first ways to keep the ball. In Fifteens, the same act stays first of all a restart, occasionally contested with a short, high kick.

Kicking to score: goals and drops

Everything above describes kicking from hand — to occupy, to contest. There is another boot, which does not move the game but scores: the goal-kicker’s. It follows different rules, and it is worth not mixing them up.

The format difference to remember: in Sevens you kick only by drop, and fast — the kick at goal must be taken in roughly forty seconds. In Fifteens the kicker chooses between tee and drop, with no equivalent time limit. The drop goal in open play is worth three points in both formats, and remains one of the few kicks that score directly without going through the set-piece.

Kicking by age band

The corpus sorts kicking on a ladder that runs from a fun catch-and-kick game to the territorial decision. You do not teach the up-and-under before a player can safely take a high ball.

Two honest notes on this ladder. First, rug-chandelle and rug-jeu-au-pied-occupation are high-intensity forms; their technique is verified, but their exact placement at a given age is coaching judgement — no federation fiche publishes them as an age-dated drill. Second, the real content of a form is set by the band: with younger players, the catch and the accuracy come before the contested contest.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Paak rugby corpus — Tactics & Match Analysis (the kicking game: territory and pressure; kick types and their moment; “the chase makes the kick”; phases and rush / drift defences; the restart as a weapon, Sevens above all; the kicking KPIs) and Laws & Governance (World Rugby scoring, Law 8; the format × age matrix: kicking style at goal, drop-only in Sevens within roughly forty seconds). Kicks named after World Rugby, Laws of the Game. Reference drills: rug-tennis-rugby, rug-coups-de-pied-binome, rug-chandelle, rug-jeu-au-pied-occupation (the corpus “kicking” theme). FR / LNR stat vocabulary: franchissement (line break), ballon gratté (jackal turnover), passe après contact (offload), ballon rendu (turnover), touches / mêlées gagnées (lineouts / scrums won). Content verified August 2026.