No One Has Ever Tackled a Tackle Bag
Tackle content was one of the first things that turned me off the state of rugby coaching content on social media.
The platforms were full of tackle drills that were poorly designed, poorly understood and, often, performed even worse. Players ran through cones, carried shields along predetermined lines and fell onto crash mats while coaches presented the activity as evidence of technical development.
The real-world results were often no more convincing than the practices themselves. Across every role he has taken, one of the most visible popularisers of these activities has been associated with the same two outcomes: a decline in winning percentage and an increase in points conceded.
The problem is most of it was not tackling.
It was, at best, tackle-shaped collision work.
That distinction has become more important as tackle videos have proven capable of attracting large numbers of views. Where attention gathers, marketers follow. We are now seeing people with little meaningful coaching experience packaging tackle activities into programmes, courses and systems, often with great confidence and strong production values.
The fundamental problem is not that every activity they share is useless.
It is that many of them misunderstand what a tackle is.
All tackles contain collisions.
But not every collision is a tackle.
That distinction matters because much of what rugby calls tackle practice is not really tackle practice at all. It is collision practice performed in the shape of a tackle.
A player runs into a tackle bag. Two players meet at a predetermined point. An attacker carries a shield along a fixed line at quarter pace. The defender knows where contact will occur, when it will occur, and roughly what the other player will do when they arrive.
There is contact. There is force. There may be a shoulder, a wrap and a fall.
But none of those things, by themselves, make the activity a tackle.
A tackle is better understood as:
A law-governed, dynamically coupled interaction in which a ball-carrier and defender continuously adapt their movement, posture, timing and force in pursuit of opposed objectives, producing a new state of play.
That definition sounds more complicated than “stop the player with the ball”, but it captures what a tackle actually is.
The defender is trying to constrain, stop or redirect the ball-carrier.
The ball-carrier is trying to escape, survive, advance, offload or create a favourable outcome.
Each player changes the problem facing the other.
That co-adaptation does not require a dramatic sidestep. It happens through changes in speed, body height, foot placement, closing distance, timing, balance, posture, grip and force. Even when a carrier appears to run in a straight line, both players are still organising their actions in relation to one another.
This is what separates a tackle from a collision.
A collision is contact with a target.
A tackle is contact emerging from a contest.
The problem with many tackle drills is not simply that they are too easy or insufficiently realistic. The deeper problem is that the opponent has been removed.
A crash mat often dictates the exact point at which the tackle must occur. The attacker runs a line designed to arrive at the mat at the correct time. The shield changes their natural running mechanics. Their speed is reduced so the drill can be completed safely and neatly. They brace for contact and often submit onto the mat.
The attacker is no longer trying to prevent, escape or exploit the defender’s action.
They are helping the defender complete it.
Both players are solving the crash mat.
That does not mean collision work is always useless. It may help with contact confidence, graded exposure, impact tolerance or isolated physical actions. Those may be legitimate purposes.
But they are not the same as tackling.
The danger comes when coaches perform collision work, label it tackle practice, and conclude that tackling has been trained.
It has not.
Tackle practice must preserve the relationship that defines a tackle. The ball-carrier and defender must both retain enough agency for their actions to change the solution available to the other.
Training can still be constrained. Space can be reduced. Starting positions can be fixed. Speed can be managed. Options can be limited.
The issue is not whether constraints exist.
The issue is whether those constraints remove the opponent.
Tackle practice constrains the problem while preserving reciprocal adaptation. Collision practice constrains the solution until reciprocal adaptation is unnecessary.
No one has ever tackled a tackle bag.
They have collided with one.
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