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Pass Into The Endzone SSG

Set Up

Adjust your playing grid size based on the ability level of your players, how far they can make good passes and how many players are playing on each team.
Adjust your pitch and make it bigger for beginner players and lower ability players. Adjust the depth of your end-zone make it deeper for beginner players to give them more room to receive a pass and get the ball under control.

Activity

Put your players into balanced teams you can play this game with any number of players you want. Variations can also include adding a neutral player in the middle who will go on the team in possessions side. You can also add two sideline neutrals who can be used by the team in possession (See video example)

Each of the teams is playing to one of the end-zones. To score a point the team must make a pass to one of their team mates who is inside the end-zone.

Once a team scores a point by making a pass to a team mate inside the end-zone the other team gets possession of the ball and tries to go score in the end-zone at the other end.

Videos

Variations

A very simple variation to this game and one you may want to start with is to assign one player who is locked into the end zone providing a target player for each team.

This player has to stay in the end-zone, other players can still receive a pass and score.  This sometimes makes the game simpler and easier for younger players to understand.

Another variation of this game is to create two wide zones and a central zone within each end-zone and assign different point values for passing into the different zones depending on what you want the teams to achieve. 

You may assign higher points for getting into the wide zones or the central zone. 

Add a neutral who plays in the game and is on whichever team is in possession.

Add two sideline neutrals who join the team in possession, they can not come into the pitch and the defending team can not leave the pitch to steal the ball from them.

Coaching Points

Coaching Points

  • Encourage players to find space and move when they do not have the ball.
  • Encourage players to get their head up and look to find an open player on their team, look forwards to the end-zone first to see if you can make a pass and score.
  • Remember the first objective is to keep the ball you don’t have to attack the endzone or go forward if its not an option

Coaching Questions

  • Ask players what different ways they can think of to score a point in this game, then challenge them to try and do them. Here are some potential solutions.
  • Pass to a team mate who is open and waiting in the end-zone
  • Pass the ball into the end-zone and a team mate runs onto the ball
  • One team mate will shield and hold the ball up on the line of the end-zone and wait for a team mate to get open