Rugby Pitch Dimensions Interpreter
Rugby Pitch Dimensions: Union and League Compared
What a rugby pitch measures, in rugby union under World Rugby’s Law 1 and in rugby league under the dimensions its governing bodies publish — because the two codes mark different lines, dig different in-goals and set their posts a different distance apart. Every figure says which document it came from.
A measurement, a code, and its source
Two codes, two groundsA rugby union ground under World Rugby’s Law 1, and the length of the field of play
The two codes’ grounds, with the source of each figure
| Rugby union | Rugby league | Where the figures came from | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Field of play length | not more than 100 m and not less than 94 m | 100 m from goal line to goal line | union: Law 1.3’s text table. league: two design sheets, NOT the laws’ plan |
| Width | not more than 70 m and not less than 68 m | 68 m | the same; note that league’s 68 m is union’s legal minimum |
| Each in-goal | not more than 22 m and not less than 6 m deep | 6 m at minimum and 8 m on both design sheets’ preferred pitch | union: Law 1.3’s text table. league: the sheets disagree and the laws’ figure is not established |
| Between the posts | 5.6 m between the posts | 5.5 m between the posts | BOTH from the design sheets: neither code’s law text carries it |
| Crossbar and posts | top edge 3.0 m above the ground, posts at least 3.4 m tall | top edge 3.0 m above the ground; the laws treat the posts as extending indefinitely upwards | the sheets, with the league post height a printed disagreement between them |
| Lines across the field | a halfway line and a 22 m line at each end, with dash lines 10 m either side of halfway and 5 m and 15 m from each touchline | a halfway line and 10 m, 20 m, 30 m and 40 m lines at each end, the 40 m lines in unbroken red | union: Law 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6, text. league: the Western Australian guide |
| Perimeter or run-off | 5 m where practicable, never less than 3.5 m for men’s games or 3.0 m for women’s | a 3 m safety margin on the design sheet; not established from the laws’ own text | union: Law 1.3(e), text. league: the design sheet only |
| Flag and corner posts | flag posts at least 1.2 m, placed 2 m outside the touchlines — Law 1.8 and 1.10 | corner posts of non-rigid material “not less than 1.25m. high” — the laws’ glossary | both quoted; the corner post is the only dimension of a league ground this page could quote from the laws themselves |
The markings, and the one that changes a score
| Line | Rugby union | Rugby league | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Halfway | yes, with a 0.5 m centre mark — Law 1.6 | yes | the kick-off and, in union, the 10-metre lines either side of it |
| 5 metres | dash lines 5 m from each touchline and each try line | no | where a union scrum may not be set, and lineout spacing |
| 10 metres | dash lines 10 m either side of HALFWAY — not from the try line | a line 10 m from each goal line | the codes use the same number for different lines, which is the easiest mistake on a shared ground |
| 15 metres | dash lines 15 m from each touchline | no | the far end of a union lineout |
| 20 metres | no | a line 20 m from each goal line | league’s restart line, where union has a 22 |
| 22 metres | a solid line 22 m from each try line | no | union’s own territory, and the line a 50:22 kick is made from behind |
| 30 metres | no | a line 30 m from each goal line | a league marking with no union equivalent |
| 40 metres | no — union marks none | a line 40 m from each goal line, in unbroken red | the only line on either field that changes what a score is worth, and only under National Rugby League competition rules |
Two grounds, and two very different standards of evidence
Rugby is two sports, and this page will not answer for both at once. Rugby union is governed by World Rugby and played fifteen a side under its Laws of the Game; rugby league by the International Rugby League, thirteen a side under its own International Laws. The two separated in 1895 and have published different numbers ever since — a try is five points in union and four in league, a penalty goal three and two, a drop goal three and one. So the code is an input here, and the other code’s figure is printed beside the answer. A number here belongs to a period as well as to a body: union’s try has been worth one point, two, three, four and five at different dates, and league’s long-range drop goal is one point under the international laws and two under the National Rugby League’s own competition rules. Every figure is printed with the body that publishes it and the clause it was read from.
A union pitch is not a size, it is a range. World Rugby’s Law 1.3 gives the field of play a maximum of 100 metres and a minimum of 94, a width of at most 70 and at least 68, and each in-goal at most 22 metres deep and at least 6. That last range is extraordinary: one legal in-goal may be nearly four times as deep as another, and in-goal depth changes a match materially, because it sets how much room a defending side has behind its own line and how far a chaser must travel. Association football’s Laws do the same thing with their pitch, which is why this site’s football pitch dimensions page is built the same way. Rugby league, by contrast, publishes single figures: 100 metres from goal line to goal line and 68 wide.
Now the part of this page that is about evidence rather than rugby, because the two codes are not equally well sourced and pretending otherwise would be the easy lie. World Rugby serves Law 1’s field-of-play and in-goal dimensions as a TABLE OF TEXT under clause 1.3, so this page quotes the governing body directly for them, and the same for the lines in 1.4 to 1.6, the perimeter in 1.3(e) and the flag posts in 1.8 and 1.10. But the distance between the posts and the height of the crossbar are in Law 1’s goal-posts GRAPHIC and not in its text, so even rugby union rests on secondary sources for those two. For rugby league it is worse: the International Rugby League’s Section 1 is a ground plan, an image, whose extracted labels the text does not attribute. Not one rugby league field dimension on this site is quoted from that document. Every one comes from two independent engineering sheets that cite the governing bodies, read separately so that no figure rests on one of them — and where they disagree, on the in-goal depth and the post height, this page prints both. That is what the amber flag on an answer means, and why every rugby league answer carries one.
What this page did not establish, stated as a gap rather than filled in. Rugby league’s in-goal depth under its own laws: not established. Rugby league’s perimeter or run-off under its own laws: not established. The edition year on World Rugby’s law portal: not shown at all, so this site cites Law 1 by clause and by the date read. Each is a weaker finding than “there is no such provision”, and only the weaker claim is supported. For what a score is worth on each of these grounds, see the rugby scoring interpreter; for the lineout the 15-metre line bounds, the set-piece retention calculator; and for the kick taken in line with where a try was grounded, which is a consequence of this geometry, the goal kicking success calculator.
Every number on this page is arithmetic on a count, a law or a regulation that a governing body or a competition publishes, and each one names where it was read. Nothing here is a commercial prediction, and no page in this section is.
Frequently asked questions
How big is a rugby pitch?
In rugby union it is a range, not a number: World Rugby Law 1.3 gives the field of play a maximum of 100 metres by 70 and a minimum of 94 by 68, with each in-goal between 6 and 22 metres deep. Rugby league publishes single figures, 100 metres from goal line to goal line and 68 metres wide.
How far apart are rugby goal posts?
5.6 metres in rugby union and 5.5 in rugby league, with the crossbar’s top edge 3.0 metres above the ground in both. Neither code’s law TEXT carries those figures — union’s are in a graphic and league’s on a ground plan — so this page takes all of them from two independent engineering sheets and says so rather than attributing them to a law it could not read.
Why does this page not quote the rugby league laws for the pitch?
Because the figures are not in them in readable form. The International Rugby League’s Section 1 is a ground plan, an image, and the extracted text carries unattributed labels. Printing a number read off a diagram label as a law would be inventing an attribution, so every league dimension here comes from two independent design sheets that cite the governing bodies, and the page says which figures could not be established at all.
How deep is a rugby in-goal area?
In rugby union, between 6 and 22 metres under Law 1.3 — the widest range on either code’s ground. In rugby league the two design sheets give 8 metres on a preferred full-size pitch and one allows 6 as a minimum; the laws’ own figure could not be established, which this page records rather than guessing.
Related calculators
References
- World Rugby. Laws of the Game — Law 1, The Ground (passport.world.rugby, read 15 Oct 2026). Clause 1.3’s dimensions arrive AS TEXT, in a table, and are quoted on that basis: field of play maximum 100 m, minimum 94 m; width maximum 70 m, minimum 68 m; in-goal maximum 22 m, minimum 6 m. 1.3(e): the perimeter area 5 m “where practicable” and never less than 3.5 m for men’s games or 3.0 m for women’s. 1.4 and 1.5 place the lines — solid halfway and 22 m lines, dash lines 10 m either side of halfway, 5 m from each touchline and try line, 15 m from each touchline — with 1.3(c) and 1.3(d) reducing those spacings on a short or narrow field. 1.6 gives the 0.5 m centre mark, 1.7 limits post padding to 0.5 m, 1.8 requires flag posts of at least 1.2 m and 1.10 places them 2 m outside the touchlines. Length check: about 10,000 characters arrived, Law 1’s own text roughly 2,500 to 3,000, and the goal-posts graphic is NOT readable — so Law 1’s text gives no distance between the posts, no crossbar height and no minimum post height.
- International Rugby League. International Laws of the Game, 2024 edition (cover: “2024 International Laws of the Game”, © 2024 International Rugby League), PDF at rugby-league.com (read 15 Oct 2026). Quoted only where the TEXT says it; the extraction runs to roughly 50,000 characters and is truncated partway through Section 17, and Section 1’s ground plan is an IMAGE, so no field dimension is quoted from this document anywhere on this site. Section 4, Law 1: “The game shall be played by two teams each consisting of not more than thirteen players on the field at any one time.” Section 4, Law 2(a): four nominated replacements and “A maximum of 8 interchanges … from the 17 named players.” Section 7, Law 1: “The game shall normally be of eighty minutes duration.” Section 11, Law 7(a): “A team in possession of the ball shall be allowed five successive play-the-balls”, with a handover when “The team is tackled a sixth time”. Section 11, Law 10(g): defenders other than the marker and acting half “are out of play if they fail to retire ten (10) metres from the point at which the ball is played.” Section 12, Law 3: “No more than six players on each team shall assist in the formation of a scrum.” Section 16, Law 6: the referee may “caution, temporarily suspend for ten minutes, or dismiss the offender.” Section 1, Note 3: “The goal posts are considered to extend indefinitely upwards”; Section 2’s glossary: a corner post “not less than 1.25m. high”.
- sportscotland. Datasheet 013 — Rugby Union pitch, March 2013, drawn from International Rugby Board documents and endorsed by the Scottish Rugby Union (read 15 Oct 2026). “100m x 70m” for the field of play; in-goal areas “between 10m and 22m”; “The distance between the two goal posts is 5.6 metres”; “The crossbar’s top edge is 3.0 metres from the ground”; posts at least 3.4 m tall; padding no more than 300 mm from the goal line; a 5 m safety margin on all sides; lines “100mm typically” wide, external dimensions excluding the line width. One of the two independent sources for the post spacing and crossbar height, which World Rugby’s Law 1 serves only as a graphic.
- Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, Western Australia. Sports Dimensions Guide — Rugby Union, citing World Rugby’s Laws of the Game Rugby Union incorporating the playing charter 2015 (Dublin) and Australian Rugby’s 2015 kids’ pathway laws (read 15 Oct 2026). “The field of play is no more than 100m long and 70m wide”; in-goal areas at most 22 m deep with at least 10 m from goal line to dead ball line; posts 5.6 m apart with a minimum height of 3.4 m; the crossbar’s top edge 3.0 m above the ground; padding no more than 300 mm from the goal line; flag posts at least 1.2 m, 2 m outside the touchlines; a run-off of at least 5 m. Also quarter-field, half-field and reduced-width formats. The second independent source for the post spacing and crossbar height, read to corroborate the first.
- sportscotland. Datasheet 014 — Rugby League pitch, March 2013, ISBN 978 1 85060 597 3, listing the Rugby Football League’s 2011 Rugby League Pitch Dimensions among its sources and endorsed by the Scottish Rugby League (read 15 Oct 2026). A full-size pitch at a minimum of “92m x 55m, with 6m in goal areas” and preferred at “100m x 68m, with 8m in goal areas”; safety margins of 3 m on all sides; lines 50 mm wide, preferably white, external dimensions excluding the line width; posts 5.5 m apart with the crossbar’s top edge 3.0 m from the ground; posts “treated as extending indefinitely upward”, the bottom 2 m padded, American-football-shaped posts allowed if the dimensions are met. The sheet does not say which of its two figures is the length and which the width, and says nothing about a dead ball line.
- Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, Western Australia. Sports Dimensions Guide — Rugby League, reviewed 14 June 2021, citing the Rugby League Laws of the Game, International Level with NRL Telstra Premiership interpretations approved by the Australian Rugby League Commission, 2016 edition official February 2016 (read 15 Oct 2026). “The playing field is 68m wide and 100m long from goal line to goal line”; in-goal areas of 68 m by 8 m; “The goals posts are 16m high and 5.5m apart”; a media restraining line “1.5m from the touch line”; white lines at the 10 m, 20 m, 30 m and halfway positions with the two 40 m lines in unbroken red and distance marks 2 m high. Its 16 m post height is a DISAGREEMENT with the sheet above, which has the posts extending indefinitely upwards under the laws; both are printed on this site, because one is a law and the other a specification for equipment.
- World Rugby. Laws of the Game — Law 3 (Team) and Law 5 (Time) (passport.world.rugby, read 15 Oct 2026). 3.1: “Each team has no more than 15 players in the playing area during play.” 3.4 allows a union up to eight replacements for an international, 3.5 leaves the number to the match organiser up to the same eight, and 3.8 sets minimum front-row cover by squad size. 5.1: “A match lasts no longer than 80 minutes”, in halves “each of not more than 40 minutes plus time lost”, with extra time only where “the match organiser has authorised the playing of extra-time in a drawn match within a knock-out competition”. 5.2: half-time is “an interval not exceeding 15 minutes as decided by the match organiser”.
- National Rugby League. NRL announces rule changes to make game more entertaining, nrl.com, Friday 11 December 2020 (read 15 Oct 2026). The Australian Rugby League Commission, on its innovation committee’s recommendations, confirmed for the 2021 Telstra Premiership that “a two-point field goal will be awarded for teams who kick a field goal from outside the 40-metre line”, field goals from inside the 40 remaining worth one point. The same item records that field goals “were reduced from two points to one in 1971”; that six-again replaces the penalty for 10-metre infringements while referees keep the power to penalise and sin bin; that a ball or carrier into touch restarts with a play-the-ball rather than a scrum; and that “A conversion attempt will not be permitted until the Bunker is satisfied a try has been scored”.
- Yorkshire Evening Post. No scrums in 2021 and ‘two point’ drop goal idea thrown out (read 15 Oct 2026). The RFL Laws Committee “considered, but rejected, two further law changes” taken from the NRL, one of them “awarding two points for drop goals kicked from outside the 40 metre line”; the RFL Board ratified the rejection on 3 February 2021. RFL Chief On-Field Officer Dave Rotheram: “we remain unconvinced by the arguments for introducing a two-point drop goal.” The same item records “no scrums again in rugby league this season”, on medical and scientific advice about Covid-19 risk, with scrums possibly returning “certainly at Betfred Super League level”, and that the committee was “not persuaded of the merits of extending Six Again to cover 10 metre offside infringements”, Six Again having been introduced for the 2020 restart. A press source, and the only account read that records the rejection with its body and date; the RFL’s own operational rules were not reached.