Publication · source ledger

Sources and Rule Editions

This site publishes two kinds of statement and they are not equally reliable. One is a measurement taken from a current rulebook, which you can check for yourself in an afternoon. The other is what a lapsed website said about the nineteenth century, which nobody can check at all. Everything below exists to keep those two apart.

The rulebook this manual reads

Publisher: International Hockey Federation (FIH)
Document: Rules of Hockey including explanations
Edition: Effective from 1 March 2026
Section relied on: Field and field equipment, specification section 1.1–1.8
Checked: 2026-08-10
Published at: fih.hockey — official documents

This is an independent reading of a published rulebook. It is not guidance from the International Hockey Federation, not endorsed by it or by any national association, and not a substitute for the rules themselves or for a competition’s own conditions. Where this site and the rulebook disagree, the rulebook is right and the error is ours — the about page says how to think about that.

What each route takes from it

Hockey pitch The overall field size only, as a single compact answer. Everything else on that route is explanation, not measurement.
Dimensions Field 91.40 m × 55.00 m; all lines 75 mm wide; the centre line; the 22.90 m lines measured between furthest edges; the circle as a 3.66 m straight with 14.63 m quarter-circle arcs; the penalty spot centre 6.475 m from the outer edge of the back-line; run-off.
Markings The set of lines and marks, their widths, and the rule that broken 5 m lines are mandatory for senior international matches and discretionary elsewhere. The setting-out order is this publication’s, not the rulebook’s.
Goals Inside width 3.66 m, height 2.14 m to the underside of the crossbar, and the relationship of posts, boards and nets to the back-line.
Surfaces Only that the geometry does not change with the carpet. No pile height, infill depth or layer thickness on that page comes from the rules, because the rules do not give them.
Paint calculator The same geometry as the dimensions route, used as the tool’s fixed template. Coverage, coats, wastage and pack size are yours; nothing about paint comes from the rulebook.

Rule editions change. This publication carries one edition date, in one place, and every page shows it; when the next edition lands, that date and these figures are what has to be re-checked. If the date above is old by the time you read this, treat the numbers as historical and go to the rulebook.

What was captured, and what was published

The domain lapsed and was re-registered by this publication. Before anything was built, the old site was fetched and stored. That capture is the primary source for every page in the archive lane, and it is the only source: no other repository, library or family collection was consulted.

Pages checked: 10 legacy addresses, each returning its expected page
Distinct documents: 9 — the same front page appeared at both / and /index.html
Assets captured: 39 files: 30 photographs, 8 interface graphics, 1 other
Photographs published here: 23, re-served under readable names
Captured on: 10 August 2026
Originals: Preserved unmodified in the private source archive

Dossier by dossier

/hockey-evidence.html Hockey Evidence Unveiled Captured at the same address on the former site; text, photographs and captions taken from that capture alone.
/site-of-hockey.html Site of First Hockey Evidence Captured at the same address on the former site; text, photographs and captions taken from that capture alone.
/hockey-reactment.html Hockey Re-enactment, February 1999 Captured at the same address on the former site; text, photographs and captions taken from that capture alone.
/school-reactment.html School Re-enactment Teams Captured at the same address on the former site; text, photographs and captions taken from that capture alone.
/long-pond.html Long Pond and Its Chroniclers Captured at the same address on the former site; text, photographs and captions taken from that capture alone.
/highlights.html Hockey Day in Canada at Long Pond, 2002 Captured at the same address on the former site; text, photographs and captions taken from that capture alone.

Deliberately not carried over

Contact details A telephone number, a fax number and a postal address appeared on every page. Republishing them would put live personal contact details back on the internet for an operation that no longer exists.
The souvenir pages and order form Merchandise photographs, prices and a printable mail-order form. Nothing is sold here, so nothing that looks like a shop was rebuilt. The two addresses are kept as notices: /order.html and /form.html.
An outbound commercial link One page carried a link to a line-marking paint supplier inside a photo caption. It is not carried over, no replacement was added, and the removal is stated on the page it came from.
Interface graphics Eight navigation banners, buttons and rules built for a fixed-width 2000s layout. They are interface, not evidence, and none of them is reproducible as content.
A third-party visitor counter The front page carried counter script that reported to an external host on every view. It is tracking code; it was removed rather than rehosted, and this site loads nothing from anyone.
Seven photographs Merchandise shots and order artwork, which are commercial rather than historical. They remain in the private source archive and are not published.

What remains unverified

Listed here rather than buried in a footnote, because a page called “sources” that only lists what it can prove is not being honest about the rest.

That hockey originated at Long Pond. Contested among historians, unsettled, and not a position this publication takes.
The 1876 Windsor Mail passage. Quoted by the former site from a secondary retelling with no issue or page reference; not checked against the newspaper.
The identifications in the archive photographs. Names, dates and occasions are the former site’s, reproduced as such.
The excavated pucks of 1998. No excavation report, measurement or dating was ever published with them.
The attendance of about 3,000 at the 2002 broadcast. The former site’s own figure, with no method behind it.
The dating of the Starr skates photographed in 2002. The former site’s claim, and not one this publication can assess.

Corrections

If a measurement here does not match the current rulebook, the rulebook wins. If something in the archive is wrong — a name, a date, an identification the former site got wrong and this one repeated — it should be corrected, and the correction should be visible rather than quiet. There is no contact form on this site and no address is published on it; the about page explains what this publication is, what it is not, and the standing position on material anyone would rather was not preserved.

The field manual routes each close with their own short source ledger naming the same edition as this page. That repetition is intentional: nobody should have to come here to find out where a number on a diagram came from.