Fun Rugby Games for Kids and Junior Training

With juniors, the game IS the coaching. Kids do not develop through drills and lectures; they develop through hundreds of touches, thousands of decisions, and wanting to come back next week. Every game below is chosen because it is genuinely fun AND quietly trains a core skill, and none of them need more than balls, cones and bibs.

The rules of running games for kids

• Everyone moving, always. If kids are standing in a queue, shrink the groups or add balls.
• Small teams, small grids. 4v4 in a 15x15 beats 10v10 in half a pitch: more touches each, more decisions each.
• One coaching point per game. Say it in ten seconds, then let them play.
• Rig the rules, not the teams. Change constraints to stretch the quick kids and protect the new ones.

Warm-up and chaos games

Stuck in the mud (rugby version)

Two taggers; tagged players stand with the ball held out and are freed when a teammate takes the ball and hands it back. Warms up evasion and gets hands on the ball immediately.

Rats and rabbits

Two lines facing each other, each kid with a ball on the ground in front of them. Call “rats” or “rabbits”: one line grabs their ball and sprints, the other chases and two-hand tags. Reaction, acceleration, and shrieking. Perfect.

Traffic lights

Everyone dribbles/carries a ball in a grid. Green = run, amber = jog and swerve, red = down and up (place and pick). Sneak in ball-placement mechanics without ever saying “breakdown”.

Evasion and tag games

Gauntlet run

Three 5-metre channels in a row, one tagger in each. Ball carriers run the gauntlet trying not to be tagged. Teaches the step-and-go at exactly junior speeds. Rotate taggers often.

Bulldog with a ball

The classic, but every runner carries a ball and tags are two-handed touches. Caught runners join the middle. The last two survivors are always your future outside backs.

Corner ball

4v4 in a square grid with a scoring zone in each corner. Attackers can score in ANY corner, so defenders must communicate and swing. First taste of defensive organisation, disguised as chaos.

Handling games

End ball

4v4 or 5v5; score by catching the ball over the end line. No running with the ball at all, pass-only, which forces support running and catch-pass under pressure. The junior version of the keep-ball games in our passing drills guide.

Rob the nest

Balls piled in a centre hoop; teams sprint one at a time to steal a ball back to their nest, then (round two) can steal from other teams. Carrying, sprinting, and tactical squabbling.

Continuous try-line touch

Normal touch, but a touched carrier must place the ball and the next player plays it immediately, no stoppages, no rucks, just flow. The single best all-round junior game: handling, support, defence, engine.

Building toward real rugby

As players get older, tighten the games toward the sport: add the offside line to touch, introduce controlled contact through the progression ladder in how to tackle in rugby (kneeling, walking, pads, then live), and start naming the skills they have been doing all along. The full session structure that wraps around these games is in how to coach rugby union.

For the coaches and parents

If you are the volunteer running these sessions, Elite Rugby App carries the adult version of everything, the drill library, coaching detail from international players and full training programs, so your own rugby (or your teenager’s) gets the same care you are giving the juniors on a Saturday morning.