Rugby
Matchmaker

Understanding The Problem

Why Fixture Chaos Happens — And Why It Doesn't Have To

It's Wednesday evening. You've just had a cancellation come in for Saturday. You open your contacts, start scrolling, and begin the calls. Some clubs don't answer. Some are already sorted. Some say they'll get back to you — and don't. By Thursday morning you've sent six WhatsApps, left three voicemails, and you still don't have a game.

This isn't unusual. This is every week, at every club, at every level of the game. The fixture problem isn't a failure of effort — it's a failure of infrastructure. There has never been a central place where clubs can post availability and find each other. Until very recently, the entire fixture market ran on personal contacts, spreadsheets, and goodwill.

The good news: most of this is solvable. Not by working harder — but by working smarter and using better tools.

Your Most Valuable Asset

Build Your Fixture Contacts List Properly

A good contacts list is still the foundation of good fixture management — regardless of what tools you use. Most clubs have one, but most lists are incomplete, out of date, or stuck in one person's phone.

Here's how to build one that actually works:

Timing Is Everything

Post Your Blank Dates Early — Before Anyone Else Does

The single most effective thing a fixture secretary can do is get ahead of blank dates. Most clubs wait until a cancellation lands before they start looking. By then, the best available opponents have already sorted their Saturday.

The fix is simple: treat every unconfirmed date as a blank date that needs filling.

At the start of the season, identify every Saturday that doesn't already have a confirmed fixture — league or cup. Those are your vulnerabilities. Every one of them is a blank Saturday waiting to happen. Start working on them in September, not in November when the season is already in full swing.

When a confirmed fixture falls through, the clock starts immediately. Don't wait until Thursday to start looking. Send messages on Tuesday. The clubs most likely to be available are the ones who've had the same cancellation problem — and they're also starting to look.

Communication That Actually Works

Stop Relying On WhatsApp For Official Fixture Comms

WhatsApp is everywhere in rugby clubs — and for good reason. It's fast, it's familiar, and it works. But it's a terrible tool for official fixture management, and most clubs have discovered this the hard way.

The problems are well-known: messages get lost in busy group chats, details get confused across multiple threads, and there's no single record of what was agreed. When a dispute arises about home or away, kick-off time, or whether the fixture was even confirmed — and it will — nobody can find the original message.

Resilience & Continuity

Get Multiple People Involved — Not Just One Fixture Sec

The fixture secretary is usually a volunteer doing an enormous amount of invisible work. They're brilliant — and they're also a single point of failure. When they're unavailable, ill, or have finally had enough after fifteen years, the whole system stops.

Every club should have at least two people who can perform the core fixture functions: posting availability, contacting opponents, and confirming games. Ideally three — the fixture secretary, the club secretary, and at least one team captain.

This also matters for in-season cover. If a cancellation comes in on a Thursday when the fixture secretary is travelling for work, someone else needs to be able to act immediately. A blank Saturday because nobody could reach the right person is entirely avoidable.

The Financial Reality

Know The Real Cost Of A Blank Saturday

Fixture secretaries often feel the burden of a blank Saturday personally — the stress, the wasted evening chasing games, the apology calls to players. But it's worth understanding what a blank home Saturday actually costs the club financially, because it changes the conversation about how much time and resource is worth investing in fixing the problem.

Consider a typical home matchday. Two sides playing — home and away. Bar spend before the game, during half-time, and after. Post-match teas. Match fees. Supporters. Family. A home Saturday with two sides playing can generate £500 to £1,500 or more for a club — money that funds everything from kit to pitch maintenance to youth development.

One blank Saturday doesn't just hurt morale. It hurts the budget. Multiply that across a season — two or three per team, across three or four senior sides — and the financial impact on a rugby club is significant.

This framing is also useful when making the case to your committee for investing in better fixture infrastructure — whether that's a shared contacts system, a dedicated fixture management tool, or simply prioritising the role of fixture secretary as a critical club function rather than an afterthought.

What Comes Next

A Fixture Network That Works For Every Club

The tips in this guide will improve your fixture process immediately. Better contact management, earlier posting, cleaner communication, shared access — these are low-cost, high-impact changes that any club can make this week.

But the bigger opportunity is a connected network. The reason fixture secretaries spend Thursday evenings on the phone is that there has never been a central place where clubs can find each other. Every club has been managing this problem alone, with their own contacts list, their own process, their own stress.

Rugby Matchmaker is a fixture exchange built specifically for this. Clubs register, post their blank dates, and find available opponents by date, location, and team level — all within the app. As more clubs join, the network becomes more valuable for every club on it. Smaller clubs with limited contact books get access to the same fixture market as the biggest clubs in the county.

Huel Tring Rugby is the first club on the platform. Founded by a club man who has lived this problem for forty years and decided it was time someone fixed it.