Long or wet grass
It eats the pass. Hit it noticeably firmer than feels polite, and stand a step closer than you would on a dry lawn.
The Passing Without Stopping Game
Skill-Building Games
Most garden passing turns into stop, look up, shuffle, hit it too hard, then go and fetch it. The passing without stopping game swaps all of that for one rule: the ball never comes to a complete standstill, and two touches are fine, one to tame it and one to send it back.
It is a two-player passing game and nothing else: one grown-up, one child, one ball, five minutes on the clock and no cones anywhere. You stand a few steps apart, you keep the ball rolling between you, and you count every pass the pair of you make. When it stops, and it will stop plenty, whoever is nearest starts it again and the count carries on from where it was.
The whole thing, in one go
Two people, one ball and a short gap between them. That is the passing without stopping game, and the only rule that matters is that the ball never fully stops rolling between you.
Two touches are fine. One to tame it, one to send it back, and one-touch passing is not the target here. That permission is what makes the game playable at this age instead of tense. There is published coaching advice behind two touches further down the page, though it was written for under-9s up to under-13s, and most children here are younger than that, which the section spells out.
The score comes before any of the setup detail, because the score is what changes how the five minutes feel. You count every pass the two of you make in five minutes and add them into one shared number. A ball that trickles to a halt gets started again and costs nothing.
Two opposite instructions, on purpose
The Other Game Tells You to Stop It. This One Doesn't.
Something changes the moment the ball is not allowed to settle. Nobody walks it into position. Nobody gets time to plan the perfect strike, so the pass gets hit as it is rather than as it might be, which is how passes get hit in a real game anyway.
That is the exact opposite of what the first touch freeze game asks for, and deliberately so. That page wants the ball killed dead on contact, in one touch, with the receiving foot doing all the work.
Both instructions are right, because they isolate different halves of the same moment. One trains the ball arriving. This one trains the ball leaving.
For a long time I watched the same loop in our garden without ever naming it. The ball gets trapped, then looked at, then shuffled into place, and by the time it comes back the rhythm has gone and somebody is walking to the hedge again. This page exists to break that loop, and the rule above is the whole of the fix.
A two-player passing game, no cones
How to Play the Passing Without Stopping Game
Setting this up takes about a minute, and most of that minute is deciding where to stand. There is no kit beyond a ball and nothing to mark out, so nothing needs fetching from the shed before you start.
- 1
Two spots, close together. Stand closer than feels right, roughly four or five big steps apart. Short passes keep the rhythm going, and long ones buy fetching.
- 2
Two touches, not one. One touch to tame it, one to send it back. Taking three is not a foul. It only means standing a step closer next time.
- 3
The ball keeps moving. This is the only real rule on the page. Send it back before it stops rolling.
- 4
A stop is a restart. When it dies, whoever is nearest starts it again, and that restart pass counts the same as any other. Nothing is lost and nothing is said.
- 5
Five minutes, one shared number. Count every pass, both of you together, out loud if that helps. Stop at five minutes whether the number is nine or ninety.
Worth knowing before the timer starts: the first minute is usually scruffy. The ball stops a lot, passes go sideways off the outside of a boot, and the number climbs slowly. That is the normal shape of this game rather than a sign it is not working, and the second and third minutes almost always look different from the first.
Thirty seconds, three passes
Find the Weight for Your Own Ground First
Every football passing game for kids at home gets played on ground that nobody wrote the instructions for. Coaching pages state distances in yards and assume a flat pitch, and a back garden is not one. So before the timer starts, hit three deliberate passes to each other and pay attention to what the ground does to them.
Thirty seconds is enough for that. A lawn cut yesterday and the same lawn after a week of rain are two different surfaces, and the weight that worked last Sunday will be wrong today.
Mown lawn or short grass
The surface every drill on the internet quietly assumes. Normal weight, normal gap, and the three test passes will feel almost pointless. Do them anyway.
Patio, driveway or hall floor
It carries much further than expected. Stand further apart or pass softer, and expect the first two to run away from you.
If the ball keeps escaping the garden altogether, that is a different problem with its own fixes and it has a page of its own. Setting the weight sorts out passes that die halfway or skid past a foot. It does nothing about a fence with a gap in it.
Why the score is shaped like this
Count the Passes, Not the Streak
A keep the ball moving football game will produce more mistakes than a stop-start one. That is not a flaw in your garden or your child, it is what the rule does, and the score has to be built to survive it.
So the score is one shared five-minute total. Every pass either of you makes adds one to it. A stop subtracts nothing at all. The only number worth beating next time is the one the two of you got last time, never each other's.
The partner keepy-uppy ladder climbs a ladder on purpose, and that is right for what it does: the ball is off the ground there and a drop is unmissable, so a streak is honest. On the ground a stop is so ordinary that building the whole score around it would make the game feel fragile inside ninety seconds.
That choice comes from a published review, though its finding is about a different rule. What the review compiled was studies of a touch limit in organised small-sided games, and what it reported was more passes made and more passes missed together. Nobody has measured two people passing in a garden, so that finding is the reason behind the scoring choice, not proof about this game. If a rule that keeps the ball moving works the same way, scoring the longest unbroken run would punish a family for playing the game properly. The review, and everything it does not cover, is in the research section below.
Same game, three dials
Making It Easier, Harder or Quieter
Three things can be turned up or down, and they do not have equal power. Reach for the first one long before the other two.
The gap between you is by far the strongest dial. Shortening it rescues more collapsing rallies than any other change, and it is the first thing to try when the ball keeps dying after two passes. Widening it is the honest way to make the game harder once the number stops climbing.
The number of touches is the second. Three touches is a legitimate setting and not a watered-down version of the game, and it is the right one on a bumpy lawn or on an evening when nothing is landing. Two is the standard ask here. One is not the target at any point.
The third is pace, and it runs the opposite way to instinct. A slow rally that keeps going beats a fast one that keeps dying, so "gently" is usually a more useful word than "quicker" when the ball starts flying past shins.
What to say, out loud:
To start it off: "Shall we see how many we can keep going before it stops?"
When it dies mid-rally: "Off you go again, that one still counts."
Instead of correcting a badly weighted pass: "Try that one a bit heavier."
Two things get handed over here instead of solved. The fuller set of things to say during play is getting a page of its own. So is the same rally on the weaker foot, which is a real variation and belongs with the page that owns that constraint. Neither is published yet, so neither is linked from here.
The evidence, and what it misses
What the Research Says About Keeping the Ball Moving
Read the 2025 review of touch restrictions in small-sided games (Rumpf and colleagues, 2025) and two findings arrive together. Limiting how many touches players get raises the total number of passes, and the total is highest under a one-touch rule. It also raises the number of successful and unsuccessful passes at the same time, which is the honest half of it and the reason this page counts a flat total.
The same review makes a practical recommendation on the one-touch question: two-touch play suits younger age groups, under-9s up to under-13s, because they cope badly with a one-touch restriction. Under-9 is the top of the age band this site is written for and the bottom of the band the review is describing, so the two overlap at a single year. Most of the children this page is aimed at are younger than anyone that recommendation covers. If under-9s cope badly with one touch, younger children are not going to cope better, but that is this page extending the finding beyond what the review tested.
That is a narrative review, not a controlled trial, and it compiles studies of youth and adult footballers in organised small-sided games with four or more players, a coach and a marked pitch. Its youngest group is under-9. It says nothing about two people passing in a garden, and it does not prove this game improves anyone's passing.
Restricting touches costs something too. In the study that compared two-touch play with free play (Rosten and colleagues, 2025), two touches produced more passes while free play produced more receptions. That was 4v4 games between near-adults, not two people in a garden, so it does not measure what this game does. What it shows is that a touch limit is a trade rather than a free upgrade: in that study, tightening it bought passing volume and spent receiving volume.
That study is twelve male junior players from a single team, mean age 17.9, with roughly ten years of organised training each, playing one type of 4v4 game, and the authors flag the small single-team sample themselves.
The closest large UK dataset on children of roughly this age is a study of 219 British primary school children (Lawson and colleagues, 2021). Across eight fundamental movement skills, failures clustered on the components needing both upper and lower limbs at once and on contralateral actions, with low proficiency concentrated in coordination and in producing force. That is the reason this page keeps the gap short and allows two touches.
The limitation there needs saying plainly, because it is the point: kicking was not one of the eight skills tested. They were run, jump, hop, skip, catch, overarm throw, underarm throw and stability. The closest big UK dataset on this age group does not measure the thing this game does, so every practical choice on this page is reasoned from adjacent evidence and from what happens in a real garden, not proven. See how Our Kickabout researches its pages.
Before you start
Questions That Come Up
Should they only be taking one touch?
No, and that is probably the most useful thing on this page. Two touches is the right ask at this age, one to tame the ball and one to send it back. The published coaching recommendation behind it sits in the research section above, and it covers under-9s up to under-13s, which is older than most children here, as that section spells out.
What if we haven't got a flat bit of ground?
Then set the weight for the ground you have, which takes about thirty seconds and three passes. A football passing game for kids at home almost never happens on a flat pitch, and bumpy grass is fine. Stand a step closer and hit it a bit firmer.
Isn't this the same as the first touch freeze game?
No, it is the opposite instruction. That game asks for the ball to be stopped dead, and this one asks for it never to stop. Play the freeze game first if the ball is still bouncing away off a stiff foot on contact.
How many passes is a good number?
There isn't one. The only number that means anything is the one the two of you got last time, and plenty of five-minute rallies are worth playing without anybody counting at all.
Keep going
Where to Go From Here
This page owns the outgoing half of a pass and leaves the incoming half alone on purpose, so the sensible next step depends on which half is currently the problem. If the ball is bouncing off a foot before any rally can get started, that is a different page and it comes first. If the family would rather have the ball in the air, or would rather pick one thing to work on for a whole week instead of one game for tonight, those are covered elsewhere too. All three of them are already live.
Want the opposite instruction first?
For a child who cannot yet get the ball under control at all, stopping it dead comes before keeping it moving.
Play the first touch freeze gamePrefer it off the ground?
Same two people and the same shared count, with the ball in the air and a climbing ladder instead of a flat total.
Try the partner keepy-uppy ladderNot sure what to work on this week?
Where this game fits if the family wants one focus for the whole week rather than one game for tonight.
Read the skill of the week planTonight's five minutes
Send it back before it stops
Pick a flat-ish line, stand closer than feels right, and see what your five-minute number turns out to be.