Organising your U13 season (2026)

What Changes for U13s

The framework for your first season with the U13s. The under-12s and under-13s seasons are not hugely different – a slightly larger pitch (roughly 90m by 60m, nearly a full pitch), one more player, scrum pushing, hand-offs, and, oddly, fly-hacking are now allowed. Sin bins technically exist too, though they are rarely if ever used at this age.

• ›There are still no goal-line drop-outs or 50:22s until U15 – a player held up over the line results in a 5-metre scrum to the attacking team. This is not written into the regulations directly, but it is confirmed by both the RFU and World Rugby.
• ›Only one genuinely new skill arrives: pushing in the scrum. Everything else builds on what players already know – keep it an U13s game, not a scaled-down adult one.

What Does Not Change

It is still about solving problems on the pitch rather than labelling a session "passing" or "tackling." If the ruck is slow and your 9 arrives to find 4 attackers against 3 defenders, solve that specific picture rather than working skills in the abstract.

• ›Avoid running a pod system – you have only got 6 forwards, and it is common to see a beautifully organised two-player pod wiped out by one big opposition player wandering straight through it. There is nothing wrong with pods in principle; there just are not enough players to make a real system work yet.
• ›The "I" in WIN matters: every player needs to know their own next action – not a grand game plan, just "if I am carrying the ball here, what is my best outcome? If I am the second player at the ruck, what is my best outcome?" That is rugby intelligence, not a drilled system.

Understanding Your Players

The three player types – pro, sports and social – are now genuinely distinct. A pro player working at 8/10, a sports player at 6/10, and a social player at 4/10 each need a different question: what gets this one to 9? What gets this one to 7? What gets this one to 5? That is the value of coaching individuals, not just the group.

• ›Fitness is not something to train directly – it is fine for players to notice they are getting tired, but do not make fitness "a thing." Hide it inside tiring games rather than running fitness blocks.
• ›Read what looks like a happy player – it does not necessarily mean smiling. Some players smile even when it is not going well; understand what actually makes each one tick, and ask them what they want.
• ›Skill ownership matters: owning a skill means being able to perform it under pressure, and that ownership comes from a player genuinely understanding what success looks like, not just being told what to do.

Scrum and Attack

• ›The 8 still cannot pick at the base – but the 9 can pick and go, which is a genuine attacking option off a scrum, alongside the 9 passing normally.
• ›Play to your scrum’s strong side: if the 9 is coming round to attack, send them away from the opposition 9, who cannot go beyond the middle of the scrum, rather than back against the grain into them.

The Four Roots

Keep cycling through two of the four roots every session – AB one week, BC the next, CD after, and back round – roughly 10 minutes minimum each, revisited constantly rather than taught once.

Fast Ball, Slow Ball

Have a clear system for both.

Kicking

Panic kicking – a random, unplanned boot with no real reasoning behind it – is common at U13 and worth coaching out. Plan it in the office, not on the field.

• ›Split the pitch into thirds and agree if-then rules in advance: who kicks and where in your own third, in the middle third, and whether you would ever kick in the attacking third.
• ›Let players use kicking in training games, but be intentional about when it is actually the right choice.

Structuring the Season

Block the season out rather than trying to fix everything at once: where are we at the first game, where are we by half-term, where are we by Christmas, where are we by February half-term. Chase one or two skills and one play to the first game, then layer on a new skill and a new play at each block. A set-piece play, like a simple free-pass or lineout-style play, can be one of your block’s two targets alongside the skill.

• ›You are not dropping the other skills – you keep working them – but pick one absolute focus for each block and let everything else layer on underneath it.
• ›Introduce a play only when players are ready for it, and invite them to use it rather than shouting it on – hope to see it bedded in by Christmas, not forced in week one.
• ›Do not chase too many layers at once. A season with one clean skill and one clean play per block beats one with five half-finished ideas.

Session Structure

Naive rugby to start, then 10 minutes deep-diving your one focus skill, 15 minutes on scrum and set piece, 20–25 minutes cycling the ABCDs with a skill problem woven in, then always finish with a real game.

• ›Do not run walkthroughs or run-throughs in training – save those for game day. If you need to set up a scenario mid-training-game, do it quickly rather than stopping to fully rehearse it.
• ›The plan itself is largely fixed once you have built it – you know what session 6 looks like regardless of what happens in sessions 1–5. Only the unit-skills slice flexes week to week; everything else stays locked in so you are not chasing too many rabbits at once.

Example 6-Week Plan

A simple way to sequence the skill and play focuses through the season.

Ball placement is the week 1–2 target: agree what success looks like (an 8/10 pro player pushing to 9, a 5/10 social player pushing to 6), then genuinely test it in week 2. The ruck-speed-gate game gets players through the gate as fast as possible so they feel when they have created fast ball; the 3v2 is deliberately physical, with plenty of player combinations rotated through it.

Keeping Them Competent, Connected, Challenged

Success is not just the scoreline – it is winning the parts of the game you defined, individual players developing, and coach and players enjoying the progress together.

• ›Know where each player is now, what "good" looks like for them, and what "better" looks like – individual development matters as much as team results.
• ›Read enjoyment beyond smiles – a puffed-out chest, being a bit more chatty, or a quiet nod can all be signs a player is enjoying their progress.
• ›Build and develop together – you want players to feel you are enjoying their progress with them, not standing above them saying "follow me."
• ›Keep huddles forward-looking and built on what has already been learned – not "we got that wrong" but "we have been working on early hands, let us make it better."
• ›Success is winning slices of the game, not just the scoreline: did we win our rucks? Did we win the defensive battle? Did we win the first five minutes, or the last five?
• ›Borrow Mark Ella’s old fly-half mantra for off-the-ball work: touch the ball once and we may score; touch it twice and we will score; touch it three times and I will score myself. It is a nice way to get pro players working hard without the ball, not just waiting for it.

Coaching Toolkit

• ›Run genuine player huddles to build ownership.
• ›Keep rotating a genuine pool of 9s and 10s rather than fixing the positions early – give your third and fourth-choice 9 plenty of training reps even if match time is limited.
• ›Keep the chat positive.
• ›Use build/trigger calls – simple, shared language for when to build phases or trigger a specific play.
• ›Rotate every 6–7 minutes rather than using a strict half-game rule, so stronger and weaker players get roughly the same proportion of game time.
• ›Use democratic passing – a higher rate of passing, with more players touching the ball, is itself a marker of success, even if it means fixing fewer defenders.