The overlap is a read, and we keep drilling it as a routine

Full backs are rehearsed into running the same arc every week, when the run only works if the defender's hips say so.

Watch a Tuesday session at almost any club and you will see the same shape. Ball to the winger, full back sprints the outside, cross into the box, next pair. Twelve repetitions a side. Everybody sweats, everybody feels productive, and nobody has been asked a single question.

That is the problem. The overlap is not a pattern. It is an answer to a question the opposition centre back and full back are asking, and the question changes every time. If the defender's hips are already turned to the touchline, the overlap is dead before it starts and the underlap is on. If the winger has drawn the full back a metre infield, the outside lane is free and the run should go early. If the near centre back has slid across, nobody should run at all and the ball should go backwards.

We coach the run. We do not coach the decision to run.

I would ban the unopposed version outright for anyone over fifteen. Put a defender in. Put two in, let them choose their own body shape, and tell the full back nothing except that he has to get the ball into a dangerous area. He will make bad choices for three weeks. Then he will start looking at hips instead of looking at the coach.

The counter argument is that patterns build automaticity, and there is something in it. A young player needs to have made the run enough times that the mechanics are cheap. Fine. Spend ten minutes on it in preseason and then stop. What actually happens is that the pattern work never ends, because it looks organised, it photographs well, and it gives the coach something to shout that sounds like coaching.

The cost shows up in the ninety minutes. A full back who has been trained on a routine sprints the overlap when the winger has already beaten his man, and turns a two against one into a two against two by dragging a recovering midfielder back into the picture. He is not lazy. He has been taught that the run is the job.

Give them the read. The lungs are the easy part.