5. Players¶

Menu: Players → All Players

The list¶

Filter by search (name, FA Number or email), age group, gender, and squad; or show only players in no squad. Sort by clicking a column heading. Click a name to open the player.

Players who have left the club are hidden by default. Switch to Previous players to see them.

The player page¶

Everything on file for one child:

name, date of birth, gender, age group, FA Number
emergency contact, consent and contract status, other clubs
free-text notes
their guardians, with the payment contact marked
photography permission
squad membership, with add/remove
their season registration statuses
their payments

Adding and editing¶

Players → Add Player creates a record by hand. A player added this way gets a placeholder FA Number beginning MANUAL-; when the real FA report later arrives with that child's real number, the import matches them on name and date of birth and fills it in rather than creating a duplicate.

Date of birth is required for that reason: it is half of what the import matches on, so a player saved without one can never be matched to their real FA Number automatically.

The optional Squad field puts the new player into a squad as they are saved, so the usual case — a child arriving for a particular team — is one form rather than two screens. It offers the squads you may manage, and defaults to "no squad" so the choice is deliberate. A girls squad only accepts a player recorded as Female; choosing one for anybody else is refused and nothing is saved, rather than leaving a player record behind.

Team secretaries can use this screen too, so a child who turns up to train is on the system the same evening rather than after the next import. Their Squad dropdown lists only their own squads, and starts on the one they run when they run exactly one. Saved without a squad, the new player belongs to none: the secretary lands on the player's page, where the Squads card still adds them. If the date of birth or gender then puts the child outside every squad they run, the record is saved but they can't open it — the players list says so, and a club admin picks it up from there.

Edit Player insists on one too, so it can't be cleared afterwards. That also means a player added before this rule, with no date of birth on file, cannot be saved again until you supply one — the edit screen says so when you open them. To find them, sort the players list by Date of birth: the blanks come first.

Mark as left the club keeps the record but removes the player from every squad. Use it in preference to deleting — deleting removes their guardians, squads, registrations and payment rows for good.

Photography permission¶

Three states: Not set, Granted, Declined. Send a request from the player's page and each guardian gets an email with a grant link and a decline link. Whichever they click is recorded along with who answered, at which address, and when.

Importing players¶

Menu: Players → Import Players

Upload the FA's player report (.xlsx). Existing players are matched on FA Number and updated; new ones are created; guardian details in the file are linked to the player.

The import never overwrites something you have edited by hand with a blank from the spreadsheet.

Guardians are merged, not replaced. A guardian you added yourself stays on the player even though the spreadsheet doesn't list them, and the mobile number and payment-contact choice — neither of which the FA file carries — are kept. A guardian already on file is matched on their email, or on their name if the file gives them a new email, so re-importing corrects their details instead of adding them twice.

What the club has changed, the import leaves alone. If a guardian's email or name on file differs from what the FA report last said — an email change the guardian confirmed, a name you corrected, a guardian you added by hand — the import won't write the FA's version over it, even when the FA still has the old one. It still recognises the guardian by the FA's details, so they aren't added twice. A blank on file isn't a change, so the import still fills in a missing email. Once the FA's report agrees with the club again, later changes on the FA's side come through as normal. Because nothing is deleted, a guardian dropped from the FA report stays until you remove them on the player's page.

When the import can't be sure¶

Matching a placeholder player to their real FA Number needs the name and the date of birth to agree exactly, because getting it wrong would attach a real FA Number to the wrong child.

When a row is close but not exact — the same name with a different date of birth, or the same date of birth and surname under a different first name, like "Alfie" against "Alfred" — the import creates a new player and tells you so on the results screen, listing who it thinks they might already be. Take these seriously: if it is the same child, anything already set up against the old record, including a running payment, stays there, and the new record will look unpaid until you merge the two on Players → Find Duplicates.