Is our pitch big?

After the Wycombe game Gareth Ainsworth made a comment along the lines of "we played well on their big pitch".

I've never heard anybody say that our pitch (105 x 72) was unusually large before but having just looked up the Mad Stad (102 x 68) Home Park is both longer and wider than it.

Wycombe's pitch is 105 x 69 m.

Here's a few others by comparison:

Hartlepool 103 x 70 m
Newcastle 105 × 68 m
Arsenal 105 x 68 m
Exeter 104 x 64 m
QPR 102 x 66 m

It looks as though we do have an unusually large pitch.

Which we got for free

I always understood many years ago, about 40 when I was in my teens that Home Park was one of the biggest pitches, bigger than many top teams had at the time including Highbury which was small. Doncaster I think had the biggest pitch at their old Belle Vue ground and I think Port Vale's is one of the biggest now. Where exactly we would come in a table I don't know.

Personally I think it should be regulation size across the whole 92 grounds, and below.

Nice in theory Sam but impossible in practise when most grounds were constructed many years ago. I think a minimum and maximum is OK the same as with cricket and rugby pitches. It would be interesting to know what size playing surfaces were chosen for all the new stadiums that have been built in the past 20 years or so.

Rugby Union pitch dimensions...

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