Compared with a spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is free, and for one box of eight players it is the right answer. What it cannot do is put a table in front of forty members that is right tonight, and that is the thing that gets the next match played.
No card, no password · One box is free for good
In one paragraph
Keep the spreadsheet if you run one box and everybody in it knows everybody else. It is free, it is yours, and the arithmetic is not the hard part.
Move off it when the league has outgrown one person. A table that is only right when you last opened your laptop is a table nobody is watching, and a league nobody is watching is one where the last three fixtures never get played. The spreadsheet has stopped being a tool by then and started being a job with your name on it.
Checked on .
Both of them, fairly
A spreadsheet does the arithmetic perfectly well. Points, bonus sets, game difference: none of that is hard, and if you have built one you have already solved it.
It is free, it opens on anything, it does exactly what you told it to, and nobody can change the rules on you. Every club that runs a good box league on a spreadsheet has a volunteer who built something genuinely useful.
What a spreadsheet cannot do is be in two places. The grid lives on one machine, and every result has to travel from a court, through a group chat, past three conversations about court keys, into your Tuesday evening.
That journey is the hour a week, and it is the reason box leagues stop. Not the maths.
It costs the club as well as you. The table your members see is always a few days old, so a player who cannot tell whether one win would take them second has nothing pulling them back on court, and the fixtures at the bottom of the grid are the ones that quietly never happen.
Row by row
| What | A spreadsheet | Clayside |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Nothing | Free for one box of 12. Paid plans from £75 a year |
| Who updates it | You | Either player, from the link in their group chat |
| When the table is right | When you last opened the laptop | The moment a score is confirmed |
| Where members read it | A screenshot in the group chat | A page, on a link, always current |
| What is still to play | You work it out | Everybody can see it, all season |
| What somebody thinking of joining sees | Nothing | A live table, on a link you can put on the club website |
| A disputed score | Your inbox | The opponent confirms or rejects it, with a reason |
| A score nobody confirms | You chase it | It confirms itself after three days |
| Somebody drops out mid-season | You redo the grid | Withdraw them. The fixtures they did not play stay as they are |
| End of season | You work out who goes up and who goes down | Drafted from the final standings, with the tie-breaks written out, and you can move anyone before it commits |
| Last season's table | In a file, somewhere | On the same site, next to this one |
| A player's record across seasons | No | Yes |
| An all-year club ladder | No | Yes, on Premier and above |
| You are away for a fortnight | The league pauses | It does not |
| You stand down | Whoever takes over gets the file, and your formulas | Up to 10 owners already have it, on every plan including the free one |
| Getting your data out | It is already yours | One click, and it is yours |
| If you stop paying | Not applicable | It goes read-only. Nothing is deleted |
Straight answer
One box and eight players. Twelve fixtures over eight weeks is twenty minutes of typing across a whole season, and paying anything for that would be daft.
A league that runs itself already, because the person running it enjoys running it. The cost of a spreadsheet is one person, and if that person is happy there is no case here.
A format nothing else does. If your club scores its boxes in a way you invented and it works, a spreadsheet will keep doing it and software will argue with you.
And if what you actually want is a better spreadsheet, we give one away. The Sheet runs one box of up to ten players, is already ruled, already does the maths, works with no signal, and nothing you type in it leaves your phone.
The other side of it
The typing moves. Players enter their own scores from a link in the group chat, their opponent confirms, and a score nobody confirms confirms itself after three days. Nobody downloads an app and nobody makes an account.
The table stops being a screenshot. It is a page on a link, it is right the second a score is confirmed, and "what is the table?" stops being a question you answer.
And the league stops depending on you being at home. Name a second owner and they have the same keys, hand a box to whoever runs it, and go on holiday in the middle of a season without anything stopping.
What the club gets out of that is more tennis. A player who can see the table moved this morning is a player who arranges the next match, and every one of those is two members booking a court, mostly midweek. Put the link on the club website and somebody thinking of joining sees a league being played this week rather than a fixture list from two years ago.
Compared with
Spreadsheet · ClubSpark · LTA Box League Manager · Tap Leagues
Questions
Yes, and most UK clubs do. A round-robin grid, points for a win, a tie-break rule, and the arithmetic is done. What a spreadsheet cannot do is take a score from a player at the court, show the current table to everybody who wants it, or carry on while you are away.
Collecting the results, not calculating them. Scores arrive by text, WhatsApp, email and in person, and one person has to gather them, chase the ones that never came, type them in and then send a screenshot round. That is the weekly job, and it is the one that stops.
We are not going to put a figure on it, because nobody has published one worth quoting. What changes is what a player can see: whether their opponent has played this week, what one more win would do to the table, and which fixtures are still outstanding with a fortnight to go. On a spreadsheet all of that lives with one person, and a member who cannot see where they stand has nothing pulling them back on court.
About five minutes to set the season up: your club name, how many boxes, and the names typed straight in. Fixtures generate themselves, so there is no grid to rule and no draw to write out. Paste each box link into its group chat and it runs from there.
Not as a file. Players are typed in by name when you roster a box, which for a club-sized league is a few minutes of typing, and past results from an old season are not imported at all. Keep the old spreadsheet as your archive and start the new season clean.
There is a free box league sheet, which is better than a template because it does the maths for you. The Sheet runs one box of up to ten players in your browser, works with no signal, and stores everything on your own device. No account and no card.
The league goes read-only rather than away. Every season, box and result stays readable, the link members have still works, and you can export the lot as one file at any time. Nothing is deleted without us emailing you first.
No. They tap the link in their box group chat, tap their name, and enter the score. There is no app to install, no password to invent and no email address to hand over, because the only thing we hold about a player is their name.
Sources
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Have a look
Type your club name and where to email you. One box is free for good, and there is no card at any point.