WittyFuttyFootball culture archive and pitch & grounds tools

Section

Pitch & Grounds

The section of WittyFutty for the people who set the pitch up rather than the people who fall over on it. Everything here is written for club volunteers, school groundstaff and small-club committees who do the job a few dozen times a season.

Why this sits on a football culture site

WittyFutty has always been about what actually happens at football grounds, including the parts that are nobody's job in particular. Line marking is one of those parts: it gets done early on a Saturday by whoever turned up, usually with numbers half-remembered from last season.

The tools here exist to replace the half-remembered numbers with arithmetic you can check, and the guides exist to point at the actual rules rather than to restate them badly.

Where the numbers come from

  • Competition-law dimensions for the 11-a-side field of play come from IFAB Law 1.
  • Youth and small-sided pitch sizes are set by the national association, so in England they come from The FA.
  • Coverage per litre, drying times, minimum application temperature and surface suitability come from the product you are using, not from us.

Those three categories are kept separate throughout the section, because mixing them is how a planning estimate turns into a claim nobody can stand behind.

What this section will not do

  • It will not tell you a pitch is compliant. That is between you and your competition.
  • It will not tell you a product is safe, suitable or compatible with a surface. That is on the container and the safety data sheet.
  • It will not fetch a weather forecast and decide for you.

Tools

  • Football pitch marking calculator

    Total line length for your format and size, then litres and packs from the coverage figure on the paint you are actually using.

  • Pitch layout planner

    A scaled, labelled plan of your pitch and a printable setup record with every measurement on it.

  • Training grid planner

    Grid size, marked length, approximate cone count and an optional paint estimate for a session layout.

  • Repaint and weather checker

    A planning checklist that turns surface, forecast window, temperature and kick-off time into a clear go, hold or stop.

Guides

  • Football pitch dimensions

    The dimensions that come from IFAB Law 1, the ones that do not change with pitch size, and where small-sided youth sizes come from instead.

  • How to mark out a football pitch

    Setting out a square rectangle, getting the penalty areas and centre circle right, and the order of work that stops you painting yourself into a corner.

  • How much line marking paint does a football pitch need?

    The line length of a full-size pitch, how to turn it into litres using your own product's coverage figure, and the allowances worth adding.

  • Matchday grounds checklist

    A printable walk-round for the people who open up on a Saturday: goals, markings, surface, boundaries and the things that stop a match.

Where the numbers come from