General Tactics

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Overview
General tactics are tactical options that come into play regardless of where the ball currently is, or cover specific tactical situations.

Kick-off
The first of these general tactical options you need to set is how you want to kick-off. Do you want to kick deep, or short, or into the middle ground? Do you want to kick towards your forwards (the standard orthodox kick-off), away from them, or down the middle? You need to decide this, but are not stuck with just the one choice. For each type of kick-off you set a %, which will determine the chances your team will take that kind of kick when they kick-off.

Kick-off Reception
This tactical option determines how you want to set up your team to receive a kick-off. You have two options here — standard or balanced. Standard has the majority of your forwards on one side of the field facing the opposition forwards. Balanced has you spreading your forwards across the width of the field, in order to be more prepared for an unorthodox kick-off.

Drop-goal Tactics
You have to decide how often you would like your team to try for drop goals when they are in a position to have a go — this can be set to High, Medium, Low or None, with high being trying to drop a goal frequently and working down from there.

Bonus Point Tactics
Bonus points affect league games, and are earned by scoring at least three more tries than your opponent in a match or by losing a match by seven points or less. There are three bonus point options you can choose, and you can select all, some or none of them.

The first option is ‘Go for try bonus points at all costs’, the second option is ‘If losing, go for a losing bonus point at all costs’, whilst the third option is ‘prevent any opposition bonus points at all costs’. What each of these options does is alter some aspects of your team’s decision making when playing. The actual effects are hidden within the match engine, but most of it is fairly obvious e.g. if you have chosen ‘Go for try bonus points at all costs’ then when faced with a penalty that you could kick at goal in the late stages of the match, then rather than taking the kick for goal, your team will instead tap and go, or kick for a lineout, or take the scrum — your team’s main goal is to score tries not get three points from a penalty. Once the tries have been achieved, then your team would go back to normal decision making.

A warning! Using 'Go for bonus points at all costs' and 'Prevent any opposition bonus points at all costs' options can lead to your club not ending the match when you are winning when have the chance to kick the ball off the field to end the match. So only use these options in specific matches where it is important.