Basic

Question
How to be a good kicker?
How to improve my running speed?

Answer
Gihan,

How to be a good kicker: This is where practise, practise and more practise comes to the fore. You need to get a good collection of proper sized balls and just keep practising. Ideally you need to find a set of rugby posts where you can kick from both sides, or partner up with someone else. If there are no facilities close to your home try and find a big wall somewhere, mark out the top dimensions of the bar and posts with chalk (you are going to need a ladder obviously) and practise by kicking the ball at the wall. The two problems with this are that the ball is likely to bounce back at any direction, so you need to consider the safety implications; also constantly kicking a ball at a wall will damage the ball over time so you don't want to use a brand new ball. You may also lose the effect of wind if it is sheltered by the wall so rugby posts are best.

For running, the thing to bear in mind is that you are not trying for endurance - the longest sprint on a rugby pitch is likely to be well under 70 metres. The "Fartlek" programme - involving short and medium distance sprints is often used to improve speed for rugby. For a national player the target for a 30 metre sprint is between 4 and 4.5 seconds. There are a number of books about this but one perhaps worth buying is the RFU Guide to Fitness for Rugby, published by A & C Black, London, ISBN: 0-7136-4924-0. Chapter 5 specifically deals with speed running, it has 8 pages on drills and practise ideas which you may find helpful. If you cannot easily get this book I would happy to email or fax you this section.

Have a look at www.scrum.com - there is a coaching clinic section in there which you may also find helpful (though you may have to hunt it down, they often bury this valuable resource well into the website).

Let me know if I can help you further.

Yours in rugby
Chris.