Following on from England’s record 62 -5 win against Wales on Saturday I asked myself the broad question. What will win the world cup? Solid defence or Searing attack?

The answer is obvious!………….Attack!

Yes, we hear all the time that your game should be built on solid defence, but it’s the speed and agility of Robinson and Rockocoko that wins the game and excites the crowd.

So how can we develop speed and agility to win the world cup?

Speed and agility drills? Yes. Endless ladder drills? No. Game specific speed and agility drills. Yes. Straight line sprints? No.

The fact that I could roll off several different methods ranging from box squats to uphill sprints only adds to the confusion as to which is the most effective way to develop speed and agility. So then let’s not even start on the theories behind the methods! Not yet at least.

Unlike the pro’s we don’t have time to devote training to all the contributing factors of speed and agility. So what do we do? Choose the most specific and time efficient methods that will get us results.

In most cases these are speed and agility drills. Running in between poles, cones and markers? Exactly, keep it simple and effective. But let’s get smart about it.

When your running towards a marker and you know what change in direction you have to make, you can plan/map the route out in your head. In a game would you be able to map out the direction of an opponent in your head? Unlikely.

Ok, so you have to make the movements random, allow players to make split decisions. In other words make the drills random and call them “Random multi-directional agility drills”.

So that’s easy, when you get to a cone the coach shouts out a colour of the next cone and you change direction and sprint towards it. Wrong.

How often is there somebody on the pitch telling you which way to run? Never.

So instead of a verbal reaction make it visual. Have players sprint through agility drills where they have to make changes of direction based upon random movements of other players.

Shadowing/mirroring – where players mimic the movements of other players is another excellent way of developing random multi-direction quickness.

So winning the world cup is easy. Just do lots of random multi-directional speed and agility drills!