Five Tips for a More Organised Team

While competing in a team alongside your friends is fun, it can be stressful collecting game fees and organising enough players each week.

With that in mind, we’ve come up with some handy tips to help your team take the stress out of managing and organising themselves.

1. Appoint a Single Manager or Captain
The most organised teams generally have one nominated captain or point of contact. This person is the glue that holds the team together and has to be trustworthy and very reliable. Their key responsibilities are to…
• Always know what the teams game time is
• Oversee team selection, organising enough players to arrive and play, arranging for fill-ins as necessary
• Pay team registration/game fees and collect reimbursement from teammates
• Liaise with competition management
• Nominate for someone else in charge if they become unavailable

2. Get a Facebook Group
A Facebook group for your team eliminates the need for texting or phone calls to organise yourselves. It’s also a great space to spit ball ideas amongst the team, post important announcements and share photos and videos.

A group takes about 5 minutes to set-up and should include all your regular starting players as well as any fill-ins who play for the team on a semi-regular basis. Make sure you make it a “Closed Group”, otherwise outsiders and other teams will be able to see your posts.

Each week, make a post with your game time, tag your preferred line-up so that they see the post and get them to respond as to whether they are available. If anyone can’t make it, you can then ask for a response from a fill-in by tagging them and asking the question.

A group relieves the burden on the team manager as it is transparent to all team members as to how the side is shaping for the coming game, so they can assist early if fill-ins are needed. It also happens that instead of the whole team asking questions of the captain separately, theya re answered for everyone to see at once.

3. Start a Team Fund
Most teams tend to divide the weekly match by the number of players on a particular day and then either pay separately or pass funds to their manager who will then pay. While for the most part this tends to work, it’s a system that can penalise those that do the right thing and show up when the team is short. It can also leave your team manager holding the bag when it comes to registration fees, bonds and forfeit penalties.
It could be a matter of charging an extra dollar per game to start building a fund, or charging the same per head amount whether you have 7 or 8 players. However you do it, make sure you keep track of it and manage it responsibly. Any money that is left over after fees are removed can then be used after team consensus for things such as uniforms or end of season celebrations.

4. Organise at Least 48 Hours Before
It’s best to organise your team at least a few days before your next fixture, this gives you plenty of time to find out who is available and give more notice and response time to potential fill-ins. If it is clear early that you are going to struggle to field a team, you can often organise with your competition management and/or opposition to reschedule the game, potentially avoiding a forfeit and at the very least showing courtesy to those parties.

5. Recruit, Recruit, Recruit
Even the most organised and well networked teams have fixtures where injuries, special events and commitments prevent a large number of players from being available. Then of course, there is the time when multiple players pull out on the day of the game and you scramble for replacements.

The best way to prepare for these situations is to always be adding new players to your team’s network and being resourceful in terms of recruitment. Social media, web classifieds, friends, family and your competition’s management are all great resources for finding players in your hour of need.

There is a natural player attrition rate where people move away, get other commitments, lose interest or what have you. Prevent any issues and always look to get new people involved in your team.