League: GB officials say stadium alone will dictate pitch size

1.00pm - By ROBERT LOWE

LONDON - British rugby league officials today denied there would be any doctoring of the dimensions of the pitches for the English leg of the Tri-Nations rugby league tournament.

The Rugby Football League said the playing surfaces would as close to the maximum allowable taking into account the constraints at some grounds.

The Loftus Road field for the New Zealand-Australia test in London on Sunday morning NZ time will be smaller than the maximum international standard of 100m by 68m.

Loftus Road is the home of English soccer club Queen's Park Rangers and is a compact venue.

RFL match officials director Stuart Cummings today said ground staff at the west London stadium had marked the pitch out at 96m by 64.60m. The in-goals were 6m, the minimum allowed.

Ground size was an issue at the opening Tri-Nations test between the Kiwis and the Kangaroos in Auckland last weekend, when the trans-Tasman rivals battled out a 16-16 draw.

The field at North Harbour Stadium was just 61m across and also had shallow 6m in-goals, even though there was enough area for more width and depth.

The New Zealand Rugby League's move to go compact was aimed at blunting the Kangaroos' attack out wide and their kicking game.

In the National Rugby League, the standard pitch dimensions are 100m by 68m with 8m in-goals.

While Australian coach Wayne Bennett laughed off the matter immediately after the test, Australian Rugby League chief executive Geoff Carr did raise the issue of English grounds with the RFL.

"This tournament is being run by three countries, so we can't have one of them changing the size of the playing area to suit their team," Carr said.

Cummings said ground size was a non-issue for the RFL. If the fields varied in measurement from one stadium to another, it was simply because of the space available.

"It's always been very open," he said.

"We use the maximum available. We've never altered the dimensions of the grounds. It's not a case of shortening them for shortening's sake. It's what we can get in."

The match at Loftus Road will be the first rugby league test played there, although the venue was used regularly for rugby union when it was the home of Wasps clubs for a couple of seasons.

Cummings said the other Tri-Nations grounds, all in the north of England, would generally measure 100m by 68m.

One exception might be the City of Manchester Stadium, the main venue of 2002 Commonwealth Games and now the home of English Premier League soccer club Manchester City.

The only Tri-Nations test there will be between Great Britain and Australia on October 30.

Cummings said the post positions were set at the time of the Commonwealth Games and were about 94m apart, although that could possibly be altered.

"Apart from that, to my knowledge and off the top of my head, each pitch will be 100m long," he said.

Neither the Kangaroos nor the Kiwis are due to train at Loftus Road until tomorrow.

However, both Australian skipper Darren Lockyer and New Zealand coach Daniel Anderson expressed no concerns about pitch size.

"I don't think that's a big issue for us," Lockyer said.

"Last week there was bit of talk about it, but really we didn't mention it too much before or after the game. Both teams have to play on the same size field so no one has an advantage."

Anderson said: "We train on it and they train on it. We play on and they play on it. That's the way it goes."

- NZPA

* Reports on nzherald.co.nz/league at the weekend