---
title: "Gate Guards"
description: "Everyone dribbles through gates for points while guards hunt the gates and a tag wipes your score: choose the gate the guards cannot reach, and decide when your points are worth the risk."
canonical: https://hobbit.football/drills/gate-guards
language: en
publisher: Hobbit (https://hobbit.football)
---

# Gate Guards

> Everyone dribbles through gates for points while guards hunt the gates and a tag wipes your score: choose the gate the guards cannot reach, and decide when your points are worth the risk.

U7 to U11 · 8 to 16 players · 25 × 30 m · 10 min

Also called Goals Galore, Boston Bulldog, Bandido.

![Diagram of Gate Guards](https://hobbit.football/api/game-library/diagram/gate-guards)

## How to play

1. Mark an area 25 metres wide and 30 long. Spread six gates around inside it: two 1 metre wide, two 2 metres, two 3 metres.
2. Everyone has a ball except two guards in bibs (three guards with more than 12 players).
3. Dribble through any gate, in either direction, for a point, and keep your own score. You may not use the same gate twice in a row.
4. Guards may not tackle or stand in a gate. They tag a dribbler who is in a gate, and that dribbler's score goes back to zero. Play on.
5. Every 90 seconds, two new guards take the bibs and the old ones take a ball. Play until everyone has guarded once.

## The decision it trains

The dribbler has six gates and two guards to read. A wide gate is easy to get through, but a guard can wait beside it; a narrow one may be far from the guards, but it needs a tidy touch. So the head comes up between touches: where are the guards looking, and which gate is behind their backs? Then the timing: go through when a guard turns to chase someone else, or show one gate and break for another. The reset adds a second question: with eight points in your pocket, do you still take the gate right next to a guard? The guards decide which gates to watch, and the two of them have to split the area rather than chase the same player.

## Make it harder or easier

- **Too hard:** make the gates wider, use one guard fewer, or let a tag cost one point instead of the whole score.
- **Too easy:** add a guard and make the gates narrower.
- **Next step:** let the guards tackle as well. A guard who wins a ball dribbles it through a gate and swaps with the player who lost it.

## What to ask at the breaks

- "How did you choose your next gate?"
- "When you had a lot of points, did you pick your gates differently?"
- "Guards: how did you two decide who watched which gates?"

## Where it comes from

The FA documents it in its England Football Learning sessions as "Gate guards" (2025), in a session on moving with the ball and turning for 7 to 11 year olds delivered by the FA's Lee Brown. Two other 2025 sessions play close relatives: "Great escape", where two guards win the ball instead of tagging, and an "Escape game", where a guard who makes a third tag swaps with that player. No source names who created it.

## Documented by

- The FA (United Kingdom): Gate guards, Great escape, Escape game
- Italian FA (FIGC) (Italy)
- Football Australia (Australia): Beat my record!, Gate Goals, Goals Galore
- German regional FAs (Bavaria, Hamburg, South Baden) (Germany): Passwettkampf, Musiala-Runde
- BC Soccer (Canada)
- US Youth Soccer (United States): Gate Activity
- Irish FA (Northern Ireland) (United Kingdom)
- Massachusetts Youth Soccer (United States): Bandidos en Dos, Bandido, Defiende tu Zona, Boston Bulldog, Wild Dogs, Bulldog 2, El Guardia, Tag, Dos y 3 Porterías, Línea de Gol, Triangle Gate Challenge with Guards, Monsters Inc., 2 Headed Monster Invasion, Guard the Goals, Guard the Goals - Tag, Wreck it Ralph, Sid the Sloth vs Crash & Eddy, Scrats Acorn Hunt, Partner Bandits, Bandits, Boston Bulldogs
- Ontario Soccer (Canada): SpongeBob Square Pants, Goals Galore

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