What a side is here
A team is your club’s side in a competition somebody else runs. The county league, the Surrey League, a squash or badminton league. Clayside holds the fixture list, asks who can play, picks the side, holds the courts and keeps the record. It does not run the competition and it never talks to the other club: the opposition is a name you type, and nothing about your club goes near theirs.
The screen
Your sides are on the left and every fixture is on the right. Tap a side to see only its fixtures. On a phone the sides are a row of chips above the list. What is waiting on a result comes first, then what is coming up, then the record.
Tap a fixture to open it. That is where the answers, the team sheet, the courts and the captain’s three jobs are. It has an address of its own, so you can send somebody straight to it.
The fixture list goes in once
Add fixtures does both ways in one place. Paste the list, or type one in.
Paste it straight off the league’s email or its website. One fixture a line, in whatever shape they sent it. We read the dates, work out who is at home, and show you what we made of it before anything is saved. A line we cannot read comes back with its number and its text, so nothing is quietly dropped.
If the list covers several of your sides, we sort it out. A county list with a column saying Men’s 1st or Ladies 2nd goes in as one paste and lands on the right sides. Where a line names no side we ask which. A fixture filed against the wrong team is a Saturday two captains both think is covered.
Typing one in asks who you are playing first, then whether you are at home, then the day. Save and add another moves the day on a week and clears the opponent. If two of your sides play the same fixture, tap both names and you get a row each.
Asking who can play
One press asks whoever played last time. There is no squad list to keep up to date. Whoever you asked about the last fixture is ticked for the next one, and you can tick anybody else in the club.
They get it two ways: a notification in the app, and an email. The email has the three answers in it, so somebody who has never opened the app taps Yes from their inbox. The screen tells you how many will get the email before you send, because we only email an address somebody has confirmed.
Nothing is binding. A yes is not a promise, a no is not held against anybody, and changing your mind is the same tap as answering.
Once you have sent it, the screen shows who said what. Ask the ones who have not replied chases only them. Copy a message for the group writes the sentence for your WhatsApp.
The link for the group
Copy the link on a fixture gives you one line to paste into your group chat. Anybody who taps it lands on that fixture with Yes, No and Maybe on it. It is the app’s own address, so it works for everybody in your club and shows a stranger nothing.
Picking the side
Fill with the strongest yeses puts a side on the sheet and you move one name if you want to. Tap a name to drop it in the next empty slot. The arrows move somebody between matches and the × takes them out. When the sheet is full the list of names steps out of the way and the button says so.
Anybody in the club can be picked, asked or not. Players move up and down all season, and a captain short on the Friday rings whoever is about. Search the club, tap the name, and they are told and can stand down. The one thing we refuse is somebody already playing for another of your sides that day, and we say which side.
Whoever is picked is told, whoever is a reserve is told they are one, and if somebody stands down the captain gets a job on their home screen.
The courts look after themselves
A home fixture holds its courts. Tick them on the fixture and they are on the diary from that moment, named for the match, so nobody books over them. Move the fixture and the courts move with it. Call it off and they go back.
Nobody is ever cancelled. If a member has already booked one of those courts you are told whose, and their booking stands. It is a conversation, not an eviction.
What happened
Each match is entered on the same score screen the rest of the app uses. Your pair is already on the row off the team sheet. Type who they played, put the score in, and the fixture’s result adds itself up as you go.
The first score you enter asks how the league scores a match, and every match after that uses the same answer. If you only know the final total there is a way to type just that.
The side’s season reads back on its own card, and each player’s record says what they played and won for which side.
Who sees what
Every member sees the fixtures and the team sheet, and how many are available. Only whoever runs the side sees the answers — who said no, who said maybe and who has not replied. That is the captain’s working list, and a poll everybody can read is the thing this replaces.
A member’s level is used in one place only: ordering the names when a captain is picking. It is never on the team sheet, never in a notification, and never on anything a member reads.
Changing things
A side can be renamed, reshaped or removed from the pencil beside it. If it has played a fixture we keep it in the record and take it off the list instead, because the members named on that record are real.
A fixture can be postponed or called off, which keeps it on the list so you can see why that Saturday is blank. Remove is for a line that should never have been there. Anybody picked is told either way.
Captains
Captain is a job you hand out from Club then Roles, and you name which sides. A captain runs those sides and nothing else: not the seasons, not the register, not the money, not another captain’s team. They can see the club list, because asking people to play means finding them, and they cannot see contact details.
At a club with a lot of sides, your competitions manager runs all of them from one job without being named on each.