Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Setting An Ultimate Field on a Soccer Pitch

With the Monday Night League looking to use both soccer fields at Annerley, its worth experienced players (who'll be leading lots of newbies) taking a moment to consider field setup.

While a WFDF Ultimate field is 100mx37m in size (and we're written previously about that), we can't fit such things onto the local soccer fields. Nor can we permanently mark our own lines alas*. We've also got to think about safety with regards fixed structures like goal posts and shelters.

Given that a full field can't be fitted, and that there's some lines there to get started with, I'd like to see us adopt a uniform way for setting the fields up (I think there's great value in having cones in consistent positions from week to week and across both BUML and BPL).

Diagram below, but in summary: back line cones should be four paces up from the soccer back line; goal line cones are guided by the top of the soccer goal box circle; outside sideline cones use the soccer sidelines; inside sideline cones take three steps in from the goal posts. Optional extra is for halfway cones on the halfway line help people to estimate a brick mark.

With these rules of thumb in mind, you should be able to set up the cones as a warmup jog, rather than a lengthy 'striding and counting in your head' exercise.

For safety, remember to keep gear and people out of the 'gutter' between the two fields. I hate laying out onto people's gear, and if people are safely watching one game, they're not watching players coming at them from the one behind them!

Note that on the 'right hand field' at Annerley, when two fields are put there for BUML, they'll be narrower than on the 'centre' field. When you're only putting one field on there (as for BPL at the moment), use the 'far goalposts' for a sideline.
Click to embiggen.

*Did you know that QUDA now has its own line marking machine? I think that after soccer season is over, our hosts AJSC wouldn't mind us chalking on some Ultimate lines on there over the Summer. We'd just need to redo them each time it rained or every month or so. I'll ask. But any volunteers?

2 comments:

Simon Talbot said...

Six yard box for the back of the endzone, or is that too near/far?

Goldy said...

Can we mark a 'dot' where the cone should go?