The strategy board: design a move and share it with your squad

Coaches

Coaches and club staff draw rugby moves and structures on a pitch, watch them play out against a drifting or rushing defence, and share a team's play with its squad.

1. Open the Strategy Designer from your sidebar or the Apps button at the top of the page. Your library lists your own plays and the plays of the clubs and teams you look after.
2. Under New play, start with the start phase: kick-off, scrum, line-out, ruck or penalty, and its kind. Then choose the field zone, where across the pitch it starts and the direction of play; a line-out only starts at a touchline. The board suggests templates for that start, such as a maul, a peel or 1-3-3-1 from a line-out in the opposition 22, or choose Custom play. Choose where to keep it (your own library, a team, or the whole club) and press Create and build the animation. The drawn moves and structures (a scrum move, a cross-kick, 1-3-3-1, 2-4-2, 1-4-3 and 3-2-3) are suggested under a scrum or phase play.
3. Phase sequence, above the Play tab, lists the stages the board built, for example line-out won, maul formed, ball out of the maul, pod carry, quick recycle. Move, remove or add stages and press Rebuild the animation: that replaces the drawing with the new sequence (Undo brings it back), and you can then change it like any play.
4. On the board, Move drags a player to where they are at that moment of the play; the run line goes through every moment you set. Pass and Kick add the ball's next pass or kick. Undo and redo with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y; Save keeps a new version.
5. Lines draws on the pitch: a support line, an arrow or a zone, shown from the moment you draw it. In the Play tab, Add attacker and Add defender bring on a player with the next free shirt number, and each pass or kick can have a style, such as a pop pass, a miss pass, a box kick or a grubber; the ball's flight follows it. In the Player tab, set the speed of each run, add a pause or remove the player. Under the timeline, the lanes show each player's moments and the ball's passes and kicks: drag one to move it in time. Slide, rush and umbrella join drift and blitz as simulated defences, and a Custom play can be 15, 10 or 7 a side.
6. Find and organise, above the library, searches by name, tag, team or start and shows one folder at a time. Make folders for your own library, a team or the club; in the Play tab, put a play in a folder and give it tags. Export playbook saves the plays you look after, as the library shows them, to a file with shirt numbers and positions only. Import playbook puts such a file into your own library, in a new folder, never straight to a squad.
7. Play, the frame buttons and the slider move through the play. View turns the pitch: the arrows make the attack run up the screen (the classic coaching-board view), right, down or left, and the dial turns it in 15° steps. A play opens across the screen in its direction of play, numbers stay upright, and your choice is remembered on this device. Camera chooses Coach (from overhead), Broadcast (TV-style) or Hybrid (a high TV angle with a map of the whole pitch). With Auto-frame on, the camera follows the action so the ball and its carrier stay in the picture: closer at a scrum, ruck, maul or line-out, wider for an attack to the wing. On a tablet, pinch to zoom and turn two fingers to rotate; Re-frame hands back to Auto-frame. Choose the defence: as drawn, or drift or blitz, which are simulated with simple rules as a teaching aid, not a prediction.
8. A built play moves as in a match: players in a scrum or line-out stay bound until the ball is out and then rejoin play, a tackle makes a ruck with the tackled player on the ground, pods re-form from the forwards who are free, and the ball comes out through the 9. The simulated defence holds the offside line, makes the tackle, folds round each breakdown and realigns. Two more starts, Turnover and Kick return, begin from a ball won at the breakdown or a long kick fielded. The Laws layer shows the offside lines and 10 m distances at that moment, each with its law number. A play built before this keeps its drawing until you rebuild it.
9. Insights and Ask show the overlap on each side of the ball, the largest gap in the defence, the support options and checks on your forward structure. What should I run from here? gives rule-based advice for the start: the launch, the corridor with the most space, a pod structure, the weakest defensive channels and the support lines. In the Play tab, name the phases, write coaching notes and add questions for players.
10. In the Play tab, Timed notes adds a caption that shows for a few seconds from the current moment. A question can name a player, or ask players to pick a spot on the pitch; Suggest questions writes them from the play's passes and kicks. Under the pitch, the timeline shows the phases, notes and questions as markers: drag one to move it in time, or click it to go there.
11. Present fills the screen and hides the tools, for training or a TV. Pen draws over the pitch; the strokes go when you leave Present unless you keep them in the play. Video makes a video of the play in your browser (WhatsApp, HD or square), with captions, showing numbers and positions only; nothing is uploaded.
12. To share a team's play, save it and open Share: choose one of the team's squads in an open season and, if you like, add a message. The squad's players see that saved version under My plays. You can stop sharing at any time. You can also share it without its questions; the squad's players are told in their notifications.

• Plays show shirt numbers and positions only, never names, and a play is only ever shared with the team's own squad.
• Club administrators and managers keep club-wide plays; team staff keep their own teams' plays. A coach's own library is never shared.
• A play made before start phases opens with Start phase needed: the board suggests a start from the drawing, and the drawing stays as it is until you rebuild it.