Fixture banding by ability

Hi,

I've been fixtures secretary for our club (Thurlby Tigers FC)  for 4 seasons and it's become apparently that whilst fixtures should be organised by ability they rarely are. The same set of teams play each other again and again. Fixtures are clearly arranged by Geographical location not ability. As a result we often find our teams are being beaten by some margin. This has become a cause for concern within our club and many coaches are often trying to either postpone games to avoid uneven match ups or having to work with opposition coaches to create a 'handicap' in some way. It's not ideal, least of all for player development.

I often wondered if this process was or could be automated. I suspect it isn't. I work with David and Hazel weekly and whilst they do an amazing job I do get the sense they are just managing to keep their heads above water with the amount of changes required. I suspect this may in part have some impact on time and availability when organising fixtures.


Is this process automated? If it is, how? If not, why? I just wanted to understand why this is and I wonderded if can help Lincs FA in anyway to try and overcome the problem. My day job is a lead web designer with a team of developers and I believe it  may be possible to take all the results that are fed into fulltime and create a programme that organises the next set of fixtures based on past performance. It would be great if I could start a conversation with the relevant person/team to at least see if this is even possible. 


Kind regards, Del.

  • This is entirely down to your league on how they manage them. Our league groups teams based on ability, then create the fixtures in those groups in Full-Time. 

  • Chris – is this done manually in your league?

  • I'm a League Fixtures Secretary in Kent (Under 7s to Under 11s). We grade (and re-grade) throughout the season, but it is all done outside of FA systems using excel. It does mean that each weekend all results have to be pulled from Full Time and added to a spreadsheet and then at the end of each mini-competition (around 4-6 weeks) we re-grade and set new divisions. It isn't perfect, but lots of evidence that games get closer as the season goes on. (We use average goal difference per game as an indicator, with an aim to get as close to 2.00 goals per game by the end of the season.) Does take time, in addition to each weekend, to do the re-grading, set divisions and fixtures - around 4-5 hours per age group each time. I would also imagine the number of teams per age group needs to be considered, we have between 48-64 depending on age group.
Login or Signup to post a comment