Hockey: Creating Space to Receive the Ball

Encourage adventurous attacking with this passing transition session - teaching players to look up and pick out their team-mate's attacking runs

Practice starts with player 3 passing the ball to player 2. Who in turn passes the ball to player 1.
Player 3 has run towards the top of the circle to receive the ball form player 1 and shoots at goal.


Rotation of players - 1 moves to 2, 2 moves to 3, 3 moves to 1.

Set out lines of cones in two different colours.

One player always along the red line and the other always along the blue cones.

Players pass the ball to the other player every time they reach a cone, culminating in a switching of sides and changing of passing order when they reach the final cone.

The player with the ball passes the ball square to the other attacking player. Upon receiving the ball player 2 runs laterally across the defender, staying just out of reach. In the meantime player 1 has to run diagonally into the space behind the defender.

Player 2 has two options they can pass the ball into the space behind the defender for player 1 to run onto or player 2 can keep the ball and continue to run past the defender.

Player 2 can pass at any time and must run to be available for the return pass from player 1.

The worker player makes a run around the outside of the channel.

The passer times their pass so that the worker player can run onto the ball inside the channel.

The worker player then dribbles out of the channel and into the circle for a strike on goal.