GCSE PE Coursework: Archie Joyner.

Strength 1: Agility.

Agility is the ability to change direction at speed whilst maintaining control. In rugby agility is used throughout the game at many different points in attack and
defence. I play as a flanker in rugby so agility is vital for me to perform at the level I do. The role of a flanker is to be a big presence in defence, to do this they
need to make many tackles where they need agility to make. Often flankers are chasing after the ball in defence when they break off the back of a lineout or
scrum to stop the attack of the opposition at its source. Another main role of flankers in defence is to win turnovers at the breakdown after the tackle which
again is made so much easier by being agile. The role of flankers in attack is to carry the ball into contact which is where I use agility the most in my games of
rugby. Also, in attack flankers run lots of support lines where agility is needed to keep up with the person on your team who has made a line break especially if
they are attempting to get past the last line of defence. Furthermore, throughout the game flankers need to help support at the ruck to clear out opposition
attempting to turn it over, being agile helps this because it enables you to change direction if your teammate gets tackled and goes down early because you
may need to change your line to get there quicker. These half seconds that having good agility make up can be the difference between giving away a penalty
or giving the other team dangerous turnover ball where your defence hasn’t yet set and clearing out the opposition effectively to allow clean ball for your
team to play away.

The component of fitness of agility has helped me perform better and therefore helped my team perform better in all the matches that I have played in this
season. Two main and recent matches where agility has helped me better the opposition are when I played against Canford and when I played against Kings
Taunton. Agility helped me against Canford in many cases, one of the main ones is in trying to get my team on the front foot when carrying the ball in attack.
Against Canford I carried lots of times off 9 in the first and second half and my high level of agility meant that I was able to create more front foot ball for my
teammates to play off. The importance of front foot ball is that if someone is going forward in a carry it means that the players that are clearing out the
person carrying have more momentum as they are travelling forward and the person, they are clearing out is travelling backwards. This then means the ball is
easier for the scrum-half to play away and he can play it quicker which gives the defence less time to get organised and this makes it easier to break and score.
To get the front foot ball in the Canford game whenever I received the ball, I would immediately look up to see what position the defender in front of me was
in. Sometimes the defender would be getting low to make the tackle and, in this case, I would assess how much space I was in. Generally, the amount of space
depends on if I am receiving the ball off 9 or 10 because players are always more tightly packed near the ruck as the defenders continue to work round the
corner, meaning there is less space off 9. If I am in little space, I will use agility to shift my direction and therefore my momentum in a slightly different
direction in order to find a weak shoulder. Most of the time it will only take half a metre of direction change but because I am able to do it at such high speeds
compared to the larger opposition, I am carrying the ball into it means I am running into weak shoulders and arms all the way through the Canford match.
Running into a weak shoulder is infinitely easier than running into a strong shoulder. This means that I was able to make a few metres so much easier than
people with lower levels of agility thanks to my high levels of agility and this creates front foot ball which creates quicker ball and this means that the rest of
my team was running against a more disorganised defence which had less line speed because they always had to step back a few metres after every one of my
carries. This also means that as the game went on and the big bodies get tired their low levels of agility decreased quicker than mine throughout the game
which meant that I made more and more ground as the game went on and the Canford players got tired I was able to make more metres and create more
front foot ball which helped my team win the game. Another way that my agility helped my performance in the Canford game was to get to the rucks in time 2