---
title: "Locked Where You Lost It"
description: "Lose the ball and you are stuck in the half you were standing in until your team wins it back: decide whether you can reach the ball or must hold the attacker up and wait for help."
canonical: https://hobbit.football/drills/locked-where-you-lost-it
language: en
publisher: Hobbit (https://hobbit.football)
---

# Locked Where You Lost It

> Lose the ball and you are stuck in the half you were standing in until your team wins it back: decide whether you can reach the ball or must hold the attacker up and wait for help.

U7 to U16 · 6 to 8 players · 18 × 27 m · 15 min

Also called Locked in.

![Diagram of Locked Where You Lost It](https://hobbit.football/api/game-library/diagram/locked-where-you-lost-it)

## How to play

1. Mark a pitch 18 metres wide and 27 long with a halfway line of cones and a mini-goal at each end. Two teams of 3 or 4. With more players, run two or three pitches side by side.
2. The team on the ball may go anywhere.
3. The moment your team loses the ball, every one of you is locked in the half you are standing in. You can move anywhere in that half, but not over the halfway line.
4. Win the ball back and the lock is off: everyone is free to attack again.
5. After a goal, the team that conceded restarts from its own goal. If the ball goes off the side, pass or dribble it back in. Play blocks of 4 to 6 minutes, then change opponents.

## The decision it trains

When the ball is lost, nobody can sprint back to rescue the others, so each defender has to read their own half. In the half with the ball: can I reach the receiver as the first touch lands? If yes, press. If not, or if nobody is behind me, I stop diving in, slow the attacker down and steer them towards a teammate or the touchline. In the other half the question is which pass I can cut out, because the next pass is coming my way. The team on the ball has its own question: in which half are they short? Count the defenders and attack the half with fewer of them. And where you stand while your team has the ball matters too, because that is where you will be locked if it is lost.

## Make it harder or easier

- **Too hard:** shrink the pitch to 15 by 24 metres so every press is shorter, or ban backward passes for the team on the ball so the defenders can push play one way.
- **Too easy:** grow the pitch to 22 by 32 metres, or add a floater who plays for whichever team has the ball.
- **Younger players:** once the attack crosses the halfway line, players locked in the far half may run back into their own half.

## What to ask at the breaks

- "When you lost the ball, which half were you stuck in, and what could you still do from there?"
- "How did you decide whether to go to the ball or wait?"
- "With the ball, how did you find the half where they had fewer players?"

## Where it comes from

The FA documents it in its England Football Learning sessions as "Locked in" (2025), in a pressing programme for 7 to 11 year olds shared by Megan Todd, an FA coach development officer, who brings it back for the programme's festival week. A 2026 covering session for 12 to 16 year olds uses it under the same name. No source names who created it.

## Documented by

- The FA (United Kingdom): Locked in

```json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "Article",
      "headline": "Locked Where You Lost It",
      "description": "Lose the ball and you are stuck in the half you were standing in until your team wins it back: decide whether you can reach the ball or must hold the attacker up and wait for help.",
      "url": "https://hobbit.football/drills/locked-where-you-lost-it",
      "mainEntityOfPage": "https://hobbit.football/drills/locked-where-you-lost-it",
      "inLanguage": "en",
      "publisher": {
        "@type": "Organization",
        "@id": "https://hobbit.football/#organization",
        "name": "Hobbit",
        "alternateName": "Hobbit AI",
        "url": "https://hobbit.football",
        "logo": {
          "@type": "ImageObject",
          "url": "https://hobbit.football/icon-512.png"
        },
        "sameAs": [
          "https://x.com/pc_hobbit"
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}
```