What We Learned Talking to 30 Sports Club Secretaries

Over the past few months our product team spoke to about 30 secretaries of grassroots sports clubs: tennis, cricket, rowing, netball, a couple of five-a-side leagues and one extremely well organised bowls club. Some use Tidewell, most don't. We asked how they run the club week to week and what eats their evenings. A few things came up in almost every call.

The secretary is doing five jobs

Fixtures, court and pitch bookings, subs, kit orders, the newsletter, and every message that doesn't obviously belong to someone else. Most said the club would struggle if they stepped down tomorrow, and more than a few were thinking about it.

Parents are the real users

In junior sections, the person booking, paying and reading messages is a parent, often with two or three children in different age groups. Several secretaries asked for one login that covers a whole family. It's now on our list, and we'll share more in the customer group once we have something to show.

Plans change at short notice

Rain, a waterlogged pitch, a team that can't find eleven players. Cancelling a session has to take seconds on a phone and reach everyone affected, including the visiting team and whoever booked the clubhouse afterwards.

Knowledge leaves at the AGM

The hardest moment of the year is the handover. Passwords live in someone's head, the fixtures spreadsheet lives on someone's laptop, and the new secretary starts from scratch. That's partly a software problem and partly a habit problem, which is why the roles guide we published this morning spends a whole section on it.

Thank you to everyone who gave us an hour of their evening. We did not expect the bowls club to have the best volunteer rota of anyone we spoke to, and we're still thinking about how they do it.