Speed before “fitness”: Reordering preseason priorities in rugby union

Rugby Union performance is increasingly shaped by short duration, high intensity actions repeated under fatigue. While total running distance remains a feature of match play, decisive involvements are more often determined by accelerations into space, re-accelerations following contact, and the capacity to reproduce speed late in sequences and late in matches. Despite this evolution, many preseason conditioning models continue to prioritise early aerobic volume accumulation, with meaningful speed exposure deferred until later phases. This sequencing is often justified on the basis of robustnes...