On this page
On this page
The short answer
Review rugby in four buckets: set piece (scrum and lineout), breakdown speed and accuracy, defensive line shape and speed, and exits and kick chase.
Rugby suits video better than most sports because the phases repeat: you get twenty lineouts and forty rucks in a match, so a pattern is a pattern rather than an anecdote. Film from height at the halfway line, wide enough to hold the full defensive line in frame.
Why rugby is unusually reviewable
In football you might see four or five genuinely comparable build-up situations in a game. In rugby you get dozens of directly comparable repetitions of the same phase, in the same part of the field, under the same laws.
That changes what film can tell you. One poor lineout is a mistake; six poor lineouts with the same throw and the same movement is a fixable pattern. Video turns "we're not good at the breakdown" into "we are arriving second on the openside when we've made a carry inside the fifteen".
It also means small samples are informative. You do not need a season of data to find something actionable — you need one match reviewed properly.
Set piece: the highest-return review in the game
Lineout
Clip every single one. Twenty lineouts is about four minutes of footage and it will be the most productive four minutes of your week.
Watch in this order: the call and the formation before the throw, the timing of the lift relative to the throw, and only then the throw itself. Most lineout problems are timing, not accuracy — a jumper going a beat late makes a good throw look bad, and the hooker takes the blame.
On defensive lineouts, look at whether you are contesting, where, and whether the pattern is readable. If your opposition has worked out that you always contest the middle, film will show it before the scoreboard does.
Scrum
Film limits what you can honestly say here. The technical detail of a front row is mostly invisible from the halfway line, and coaching it from a wide shot is guesswork.
What you can see and should review: the feed and strike timing, whether the scrum is going backwards or wheeling, and — most usefully — what the backs do off the base. Scrum as a launch platform is a legitimate analysis target even when the technical detail is not.
Breakdown, defence and transition
Breakdown speed
The single most informative thing to count. Clip ten rucks and time the ball from tackle to the scrum-half's hands. Under three seconds and you are playing; over five and the defence is set and your attack is running into a wall.
Then watch the arrivals. Who gets there first, how many bodies commit, and whether players are arriving from the correct side. Over-committing to a ruck that was already won is one of the commonest and most correctable faults, and it is obvious on a wide shot and invisible from the touchline.
Defensive line
This is where the wide camera angle pays for itself. You want the full width of the defensive line in frame, because the two things you are looking for are both about width:
- Line speed and connection. Is the line coming up together, or is one player shooting out and leaving a dog-leg?
- Spacing towards the edge. Numbers are usually fine in the middle and short on the outside. Freeze the frame two phases before the try was scored and count.
Almost every edge try has a visible cause several phases earlier. Clipping the try itself tells you nothing; clipping the phase where the spacing went wrong tells you everything.
Exits and kick chase
Clip every exit from inside your own twenty-two. It is a phase with a clear plan, a clear outcome, and a completely countable success rate.
For kick chase, the informative moment is not the kick. It is the chase line: how quickly the chasers get moving, whether they are connected across the field, and whether the kick length matched the chase. A good kick with a slow chase is a bad exit.
What to count, not just watch
Rugby's repetition makes simple counting unusually powerful. You do not need analyst software — a notepad and a paused video will do.
| Count | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Lineout retention, by zone | Whether the problem is the throw, the call or the movement |
| Ruck speed, tackle to pass | Whether your attack ever gets front-foot ball |
| Players committed per ruck | Over-commitment, which starves the next phase of width |
| Exit success from the 22 | Whether your exit plan works under pressure |
| Tries conceded by channel | Whether you are losing games in midfield or on the edge |
| Penalties by type | Discipline patterns, which are nearly always repetitive |
Four or five of these tracked across a season will tell you more about your team than any amount of unstructured watching. They also give players something concrete: "our ruck speed was 2.8 seconds against them and 4.6 against these" is a conversation, not a criticism.
Filming rugby specifically
Two things differ from football.
You need more width. A rugby defensive line can span sixty metres, and if the edge is out of frame you cannot review the thing that most often decides the game. Frame wider than feels natural, and accept that individual players will be small. Height compensates.
Set pieces need a moment of patience. Do not pan away during the formation before a lineout. The pre-throw picture is where the information is, and footage that cuts to the jump has already missed it.
Otherwise the rules are the same: halfway line, as high as possible, static, and consistent between matches. Our guide to filming your own games covers setup and settings.
On tracking and drawing in rugby: AI player tracking follows individuals through a phase, which works well for showing a defender drifting or a support runner arriving late. Accuracy depends heavily on the footage — a wide, steady, high angle tracks well, and rucks and mauls are genuinely hard for any system because players overlap into a pile. Drawing the defensive line and the gap is often the clearer tool for set-piece and line-shape work.
Common questions
What should you review in a rugby match?
Set piece, breakdown, defensive line and exits. Clip every lineout and every exit from inside your own 22, time ten rucks from tackle to pass, and freeze the defensive line two phases before any try you conceded. Those four reviews cover most of what decides club rugby matches.
How do you analyse the breakdown on video?
Time the ball from tackle to the scrum-half's hands across ten rucks, then count how many players committed to each. Under three seconds is front-foot ball and over five means the defence is set. Over-commitment to rucks that were already won is the most common correctable fault and is clearly visible on a wide shot.
What camera angle works best for rugby?
High, static, at the halfway line, and wider than you would film football. A rugby defensive line can span sixty metres, and the edge is where most tries originate, so the full width needs to stay in frame. Height is what makes the spacing between defenders readable.
Is video analysis useful for amateur rugby teams?
Yes, arguably more than in most sports, because rugby phases repeat enough that one match gives you a real sample. Twenty lineouts and forty rucks from a single game is enough to identify a genuine pattern rather than a one-off, so a club side gets actionable findings from reviewing one match properly.
Can you analyse scrums from match footage?
Only partially. The technical detail of the front row is largely invisible from a halfway-line camera, so coaching it from wide footage is guesswork. What you can usefully review is feed and strike timing, whether the scrum is going backwards or wheeling, and what the backs do off the base.