The 2025 best-practice guidelines for NSW sporting fields provide help with:

  • understanding the science and evidence to improve the planning, design, construction, and management of community sporting fields, and common limitations;
  • flexible, outcomes-focused principles to develop solutions tailored to local conditions while achieving best practice;
  • understanding sporting field performance benchmarks, including water use, playability, and carrying capacity;
  • optimising the performance, resilience, and sustainability of sporting fields to meet our social, recreational, environmental, and economic outcomes;
  • making more effective use of financial resources;
  • comparing different sports field construction types, such as perched water table, best practice, and hybrids.

The guidelines are based on data from detailed assessments of fields across NSW, including:

  • irrigation systems from about 100 sporting fields;
  • soil, playing surface condition, micro-climate, and sport wear levels from about 2,000 sporting fields.