Attacking Against a Drift Defence

To fully understand how to attack the drift defence, it is important to understand it from a defencive perspective. This is covered in the defencive article: Drift Defence. 

The concept behind the drift defence is a pattern of “up and out”, where the defenders want to shift across the field to either push the ball wide or to cover a numerical advantage the attack have out wide. Therefore there is two ways to attack against the drift, if there is an advantage out wide then getting the ball their faster than the defence can get there is a good option; or if the defence is trying to push the ball wide then the attack can “cut back” and test that the defenders are correctly shifting.

Obviously the easiest way to break through a drifting defence is to capitalise when they make a mistake. Attackers should always be looking to spot any gaps in the defence which they are able to exploit. This is more likely to occur later in the game where the defence is tired and not able to cover the gaps as effectively as shown below.

In the example below, the defence is drifting to push the ball wide to either give the attack a worse field position or to isolate the winger. To do this, the defenders are switching which attacker each player is marking. The attacking side identify this and the 15 cuts back at an angle against the defence, just inside the defensive 15. This works as the defensive 15 already has their momentum going one way and the attacker cutting back the opposite direction.

The example below shows the defence being out numbered out wide and therefore trying to drift to cover this space. There are two ways to deal with this, the first is to quicker than the drift, getting the ball to the wide players before the defenders are able to push across. This can be done through quick passing, a miss pass or even a cross field kick. 

Alternatively, a way to deal with the drift defence is to not allow them to drift at all, instead drawing the defender to fix them, then giving the ball out wide. This means that the defenders are unable to change who they are marking and have to make the tackle of the player in front of them.

To play against a drift defence the attack have to test the defenders. A key part of the drift defence strategy is to allow the attack to move the ball around and drift out to cover the wider players. The attack must force the defenders to make decisions by bring the ball close to the defensive line, run on an angle against the drifting defence or just exploit the space before the drift can cover it.