Loose to tighthead

Question
Hey...My coach recently asked me to play tighthead prop.  A bit hesitant as all my life I have been a loosehead or hooker and feel quite comfortable at loose as I have played most of my high level rugby at 1 both overseas and domestically.  The few tiems I have tried 3 I find I am so much less effective.

I know both positions share some skills but I find them to be different.  Is this in my head?  Do you have any tips that may help the transition?

I am 5'11" and 225lbs with good fitness and am in the gym 5x a week working on power exercises like squat, cleans etc therefore enabling me to be as strong as I can be.

Any help is appreciated.

J

Answer
I hear you mate. I was a loose head for years and was often thrown in tighthead by coaches who couldn't understand the issue as they where not props ever. On one occasion I even had a player-coach who was a loose head play me at tightead because he "thought he was a better loosehead" than me, which made no sense. Well if you ask me it is very hard to go into tight head and do well off the bat.

So it is not in your head, although you do want to work on getting your confidence up. Even considering the difficulty you must beleive you can actully do it.

Tips:

First of all, you should bind first. Step directly behind your hooker so your nose is in the middle of his back, reach around and get a good grip of his jersey at the front. As you grip step to the right and pop your shoulder out FULLY, only then is the loose head allowed in. Your left hip should be ahead of your hookers, feet square and no more than shoulder width apart. Your feet need to be ahead of the hookers. With your hips and shoulders ahead of your hooker, standing square looking straight ahead you will lead into the scrum. You should notice your hooker may even be angled looking to the left, that is ok, this will give him a better angle to hook at put in.

Scrum against the loosed head but aim to drive him lower and try to split him and his hooker.

The loose heads goal is to create a wide high tunnel for the hooker to work in to hook the ball. If you have him low and off balance his hooker is going to struggle.

This is important to remember when you go back to loose head too.

On the squat, squat deep at the knees, straight back shoulders square. It should be like doing a good olympic-clean in the gym, ass out like going to the toilet, small of your back straight or arched in, stomach/core should be tensed.  Look at the shorts-line of the loose head. Aim to hit your shoulder into that line. Let him figure out how to get his position right, do not accomodate him in anyway. A comfortable scrum is a weak scrum. Even if you have a bad day the guy should come away feeling it.

Get your right grip up quick and grip hard, keep your back straight and dip the knees quickly about 2 inches and spring forwards, driving into the imaginary area behind the loose head.

In training you can practice buy trying to hit the scrum machine as low as you can with a team-mate marking with chalk the last point of impact each time. Get film footage of your training and your games too. Any live scrumming at training is a good thing. Go one on one with a prop too to work on getting low.

These links should help:

Srummaging:

My favourite:  

http://www.coachingrugby.com/rugby/coaching/unitskills/scrum/buildingthescrum.ht...

http://www.usarugby.org/media/EDocs/scrum.pdf

http://www.texasyouthrugby.com/download/748/docs/Building_the_scrum.pdf


Good luck and let me know how it goes.