Your first match weekend
The organiser’s week: Comms plan, Match day, Comms log.
For organisers
Setting up a season
Get the contacts and the fixtures right and the rest of the season runs itself. Here is the order that works.
Step 1
Clubs, teams and contacts
Every automated message goes to the team contact and the club contact, deduplicated. Add both where you have them: a district secretary as the club contact, the coach as the team contact. Mobiles are optional and only matter if you turn texts on. Import teams from a spreadsheet if you have a list; the importer maps your columns and shows you anything it could not match before it saves.
Step 2
Create the competition
League, cup, tournament or friendly. For a league set the match day, the points (3/1/0 or the schools-style 3/2/1 where a point is earned for playing), and Fixtures Per Pairing: Twice for home and away, Once for a single round robin. Getting this right matters: the fixtures list checks for missing games against it, and a single-round league left on Twice reports every return leg as missing.
Decide public visibility per competition. Fixtures and results can be public while the table stays private, which many schools leagues prefer.
Step 3
Fixtures in
- Generate a round robin from the entered teams, with the match day and any excluded dates. Weeks are labelled and dated; the scheduler flags a club booked twice on one day across all your competitions and suggests free dates.
- Enter by hand when the association already has a list. Leave the kick-off at “TBC” and the venue empty for the home team to fill in later; a fixture with no date at all sits in its own “Date to be arranged” section until you date it.
- Double headers: one physical match counting in two competitions, for example a cup tie that doubles as the league game. Link the two fixtures and one score entry updates both tables.
- Lock dates that must not move so the clash resolver never proposes shifting them.
Step 4
The comms settings
Account defaults live in your profile; each competition can inherit them or override them under Edit league → Fixture Emails. An override replaces the account settings entirely, so set every field. The decisions:
- Venue request lead, in calendar days. 6 lands the Sunday before a Saturday game; 13 lands the Sunday a fortnight before, which suits leagues whose managers book pitches early. Requests go out at 07:00 on a Sunday rather than on a match day, so Saturdays carry score requests only.
- Reminders at 6 and 3 days, both teams, email only, sent at 18:00 so they arrive apart from the morning’s venue requests.
- Score request on match day, in the slot after kick-off.
- Texts: on or off per competition. See Texts explained.
Then open Comms plan and read the timeline back. If it says what you would say to a manager, you are ready. The first venue request goes out on its own on the next 07:00 that is within the lead.
More help
Related guides
For committees
What your association sees, controls and can promise its members.
FAQ
Straight answers for managers and organisers: emails, links, texts, scores.
For team managers
The three things a manager ever does, each under a minute.