How do you schedule your fixtures?
Jack Patmore
We're interested in hearing how our leagues using Full-Time currently schedule their fixtures.
We know this varies hugely among leagues so are keen to hear your thoughts and hopefully gain some insight so we can begin to understand your requirements better.
As a starter for conversation we wondered if you could confirm:
Do you currently use Full-Time to plan your season's fixtures or is this offline?
If you use Full-Time, which scheduler or method of uploading fixtures do you use?
What improvements from Full-Time would you want to see to help plan your fixtures?
How do you manage shared venues & pitch availability?
Of course please feel free to share anything else you may think is relevant or helpful for other leagues!
Our fixtures are scheduled using the standard scheduler on Full-Time for each division, we do not do any pitch sharing/availability. It would be useful to be able to incorporate county cup fixtures without using the 'Other Fixtures' tool.
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We are the same as Chris Brown but I totally agree regarding county cup matches this is a big problem to us we have teams playing in Lancashire FA, Westmorland FA Furness FA Craven FA matches so that would be a great bonus if we could pick up their county matches.
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I have created fixture via a spreadsheet setup to do divisions home and away in alternate weeks, with having 6 teams from a club in 1 age group and have 2 age groups using the the same (eg 7&8, 9&10, 11&12) pitch issue have to be taken into account
The Cup/Festival fixture tool is more simple and less confusing
Reply was sent in from Southern Region Women's Football League:
Do you currently use Full-Time to plan your season's fixtures or is this offline? Use Full Time.
If you use Full-Time, which scheduler or method of uploading fixtures do you use?
Manual in the first instance to schedule when specific games to be played eg midweek games and travel distances and then the scheduling / rescheduling tool.
What improvements from Full-Time would you want to see to help plan your fixtures?
Have the scheduling / rescheduling tool not show bias to one team pitch users. Invariably such teams complete their home season early and then have a run of away games. This is unfair for end of season midweek games and can impact a club’s cash flow if they rely on home and then an away game subs to pay a home pitch hire.
How do you manage shared venues & pitch availability?
If in the same league ie 1st and Reserve teams unless there is a clear bias towards one of the teams the scheduling tool is allowed to allocate games. If grounds are share with a team outside the league, agreement is made with the other league as to which weeks each league will have ie week 1 & 3 or week 2 & 4 with the non-week marked as pitch unavailable.
Response from Andy McWilliam at Weetabix Youth League:
As a starter for conversation we wondered if you could confirm:
Do you currently use Full-Time to plan your season's fixtures or is this offline? I use part full time and part manual due to mini soccer being multi pitches and times
If you use Full-Time, which scheduler or method of uploading fixtures do you use? I use the multi scheduler for U11’s to U13’s and then manually check through for any pitch duplications, I use the uploader for mini soccer after manually scheduling all mini soccer fixtures
What improvements from Full-Time would you want to see to help plan your fixtures? To be able to schedule mini soccer with multiple time slots and pitches ie: we have 4 kick off times on 4 separate pitches at 40/50 minute intervals
How do you manage shared venues & pitch availability? The multi scheduler helps with this as long as the correct information is entered in from the start, once a week I download all remaining fixtures and check through for any pitch clashes. The problem tends to rise when fixtures get postponed and rescheduled when it becomes a juggling act to fit them in.
Of course please feel free to share anything else you may think is relevant or helpful for other leagues! One issue I have noticed over the last few seasons it that when the NFA swap club affiliations to fulltime the club name becomes their pitch, we then have to go through each team and change their pitch to ie: mini soccer venue, or their pitch/school they are using.
As a starter for conversation we wondered if you could confirm:
Do you currently use Full-Time to plan your season's fixtures or is this offline?
We use the Advanced Scheduler 11 A Side fixtures Home and Away. Our U7 to U12 Teams play at Central Venues playing approx 5 or 6 fixtures in each round of fixtures. The advanced Scheduler couldnt do this very well, but adjusting the groups each time in the WGS made it even worse and time consuming. We now use an excel fixture generator to create the fixtures and then use the fixture uploader to put them into full time. Groups are adjusted al in excel.
If you use Full-Time, which scheduler or method of uploading fixtures do you use?
Advanced for 11 a side
What improvements from Full-Time would you want to see to help plan your fixtures?
When you hover the mouse over a fixture in the availability grid it would be good to see who the fixture is against. This will allow you to see who is playing who and maybe adjust the fixtures manually without the need to keep coming out of this view to see the fixture on this date
How do you manage shared venues & pitch availability?
Central Venues ...Create all the timeslots in Full time and then use a fixture generator in excel to create the fixtures. Copy the fixtures into a fixture uploader and upload them into Full time. This works well and maximises the use of the pitches and allows an efficient use of referees. 11 A side when sharing with other leagues we decide prior to the start of the season what weeks we will have..ie we have 2 & 4 and the other league have 1,3 & 5 This is reviewed as the season progresses and fixtures become more spread.
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