A Guide To The Hockey Field

Hi, I'm James, and I play for East London Hockey Club. I've been playing for 15 years, and this is our home hockey pitch. A lot of people will say that it's field hockey, but you'll be surprised to see we're actually on Astroturf and not on a field.

It's very uncommon now for hockey to be played on a field, it's mostly going to be on Astroturf. The pitch itself, as you can see, is fairly large. It is 100 yards long by 60 yards wide, the pitch is split up into four quarters of 25 yards.

Okay, here we are on the 25-yard line. Now, the reason for we have a 25 yard line; it has a significance within the rules. If any fouls occur inside the 25, then if it's a free hit to the attacking team, then every player, including their own, have to be outside of them by 5 yards.

They can't ever play closer than 5 yards. If the free hit was taken outside the 25, then the attacking team can be as close to their player as they want. The defensive side still has to be at least 5 yards away from the player.

Now, before we go on talking about the deek, in the recent few years, we've had a rule change with hockey where if a foul were to occur in this area, the ball has to be taken 5 yards back. Now, unfortunately, our pitch hasn't been updated yet with a dash by a line, but on most all newer pitches, you will find a dash bigger semi-circle, five yards out from the edge of the deek itself, and that's where the hit can be taken. Okay, in hockey, we have two types of corners.

We have the short corner, which we will talk about in a minute, but we also have the long corner. Now, unlike football, when a corner is taken, it isn't actually taken actually in the corner. It actually comes up 5 yards, and the corner is taken here.

And it's the same with the free hit: defensive players have to be 5 yards outside of the hit being taken. Okay, so here we are actually inside the hockey D. Now, one of the rules within hockey itself is that you cannot score a goal unless you strike the ball from within the D.

Any shots outside the D, they will simply not count. The ball has to come off the player within the D before it goes into the goal for it to be counted. Okay, short corners are commonly taken from a mark ten yards outside the goal.

They can be taken from either side, but most commonly, you will find, teams will take them from the right hand side. Okay, here we are in the D at one of the last markings, the penalty strikes box itself. Penalty strikes are often given if the ball is impeded going into the goal, normally by a player on the line, stopping the ball with his foot or getting in the way of a shot that's not deemed dangerous.

And that's been a collection of the markings around a hockey pitch. .