Pitch Markings

[AntonyGoodman]

Interested to know what other clubs do about marking pitches for younger age groups.

At U11 this year we are yet to play any team that have a pitch marked out in paint (apart from us).

Experiences so far: Cones to mark out pitches (sometimes in straight lines), poles (old corner flags) to mark out pitches, pitches that are nowhere near the regulation size, pitches where no effort to has been made to mark the centre line of the pitch, the 7m line (10) or the 15m line (22), and pitches with no in goal area marked.

Some pitches are so small that had they bothered to try and mark the 15m, it would have been closer to the centre line than the 7m line!

Attached is my badly drawn diagram of our pitch markings (we now have two pitches marked out like the one on page 2).

Thanks,

Antony

View attachment 3100

 

[Lee Lifeson-Peart]

Interested to know what other clubs do about marking pitches for younger age groups.

At U11 this year we are yet to play any team that have a pitch marked out in paint (apart from us).

Experiences so far: Cones to mark out pitches (sometimes in straight lines), poles (old corner flags) to mark out pitches, pitches that are nowhere near the regulation size, pitches where no effort to has been made to mark the centre line of the pitch, the 7m line (10) or the 15m line (22), and pitches with no in goal area marked.

Some pitches are so small that had they bothered to try and mark the 15m, it would have been closer to the centre line than the 7m line!

Attached is my badly drawn diagram of our pitch markings (we now have two pitches marked out like the one on page 2).

Thanks,

Antony

View attachment 3100

Doncaster where one of my sons played was the only place I knew of that had 2 proper marked out pitches for U11/12 c/w posts. Everyone else used cones or half a pitch(ish)

 

[The umpire]

We have one proper marked out pitch with posts for U11/12.
If they're both playing then one use half a main pitch with cones for 1/2 way etc.

 

[spikeno10]

To start with our club is blessed with only two pitches and very little other space so the luxury of a pitch marked out in this manner is beyond us.
Whilst I was more actively involved with the U11 & U12 age groups we used one of the pitches for both of those teams, marking out two pitches across the width of a full pitch. We used the 5 metre channel as the "in goal" , the 15 metre marks as "22s" and did mark the centre with flags. Touch lines were the 10 metre line of the main pitch and the 5 metre line. This kept a gap between the pitches and both pitch away from the posts.
All of this will be slightly irrelevant as the NRoP and Blueprint rugby change everything for the U12s next year with U13s+ changing after the pilot so hope you have space to mark out both U12 & U13 pitches and then onwards.

 

[AntonyGoodman]

Thanks for the replies guys. I realise we are lucky with space, but it does make me chuckle that people moan about the new rules of play reduced pitch sizes and then cone out an area the size of a postage stamp to play their games on

U12 NRoP play on the same size pitch as U11 NRoP by the way.

Thanks,

Antony

 

[Foggy-Balla]

We are blessed with a space 600x200m to play our U6-U12 sides on. We lease the pitches from the local council and have a very good relationship with them - they maintain and mark out. They are quite firm about cancelling when waterlogged, but to be honest we tend to ring them to say we're not playing before they tell us not to.

Thankfully this means we have lots of pitches of the correct size for each age group. Only downside is there are just not enough of them!

As a referee it was quite a shock to go to a full-sized U9 pitch. One of our lads got a turnover on his own try line and ran the length of the pitch to score - I swear I pulled something chasing him and have been walking like John Wayne all week. In seriousness one thing I have noticed with a larger pitch is lots of seven-tackle turnover ball and matches with very few tries after the 15-17 extravaganzas of last year...

 

[Browner]

=AntonyGoodman;288225]Interested to know what other clubs do about marking pitches for younger age groups.

At U11 this year we are yet to play any team that have a pitch marked out in paint (apart from us).

Experiences so far: Cones to mark out pitches (sometimes in straight lines), poles (old corner flags) to mark out pitches, pitches that are nowhere near the regulation size, pitches where no effort to has been made to mark the centre line of the pitch, the 7m line (10) or the 15m line (22), and pitches with no in goal area marked.

Some pitches are so small that had they bothered to try and mark the 15m, it would have been closer to the centre line than the 7m line!

Attached is my badly drawn diagram of our pitch markings (we now have two pitches marked out like the one on page 2).

Thanks,

Antony

**********************


We once played a CB U11 cup final on a scattered 'coned ' shambles of a pitch , a polite 'suggestion' was made to the CB that marked pitches should be the preferred standard for the CB cup final , the suggestion was met with ....

a) an aggressively worded CB email reply about our club not 'hosting' finals due to poor facilities
B) the CB forwarded our 'suggestion' to the host club, who's m&j chairman threatened to ban our whole m&j from their next festival
C) our club threatening the age group managers/coach with a ban if they corresponded with CBs without their prior sign off again

:deadhorse:

 

[crossref]

he he, I am kind of not surprised though

given it wasa final, couldn't you have got some of your own cones out your kit bag and workied with the oppo coaches to straighten the lines up, and fill in the gaps?

 

[Foggy-Balla]

OK, new to this. What is a CB? Presume not a Citizens Band radio!

 

[OB..]

OK, new to this. What is a CB? Presume not a Citizens Band radio!

CB = Constituency Body ie basically a county, as represented on the RFU Counciil. Some counties share a rep eg Notts, Lincs, & Derby; some have 2 reps eg Gloucestershire. It is linked to the number of clubs.

 

[Browner]

he he, I am kind of not surprised though

given it wasa final, couldn't you have got some of your own cones out your kit bag and workied with the oppo coaches to straighten the lines up, and fill in the gaps?

Of course we did that crossref, the suggestion merely followed our intevening tidy up ......

The hosting club were delighted to have a ' permanent queue' at their bar/kitchen and sweet stand and reap the profits from 9am-4pm from those of course , but couldn't spend a few quid paying a groundsman to mark out proper pitches ......

Poor poor show , the counter threats told me everything I needed to know ( or perhaps it was simply the jealousy of the M&j chairman who'd seen his sons team beaten by mine for the 4th year running !!!! )

 

[Foggy-Balla]

CB = Constituency Body ie basically a county, as represented on the RFU Counciil. Some counties share a rep eg Notts, Lincs, & Derby; some have 2 reps eg Gloucestershire. It is linked to the number of clubs.

Aha! Know what they are, just never heard abbreviation. Cheers!