Jay,I agree that there is ways that the SAFA could look at to stop all the paperwork that Morris and Co have to deal with.....

Jay and the guvnor: you will be pleased to hear that the SAFA has been looking at the paperwork! In the West Cup for example, we are now in our third season with email notification of fixtures including club contact and referee contact information. Team lines are electronically attached to the emails and can be completed on computer. If your league delegates to the SAFA are reporting back properly, your clubs should know that the SAFA is currently working on extending this to the other cup competitions. Some things cannot be easily computerised - it would be very difficult to issue suspension notices by email as that would require the clubs to give email addresses for all their players.

So, we are moving forward but these things don't just "happen". Every time you introduce major changes it usually involves a great deal of co-operation between the competition administration, the clubs, referees etc etc. Getting agreement for change can be a tortuous process. For example, less than 10% of our clubs even bother to attend the SAFA AGM (the actual figure is nearer to 5%). Bearing in mind that the AGM is the highest decision making body in the SAFA, the level of participation is abysmal. It's very easy to come on here telling us all what is wrong but if nearly 95% of the member clubs stay away on the one afternoon in the year when the big decisions are being made then I would suggest that it's not just the blazers who are "failing the members".

Morris it isn't a dig at anyone it's only ideas on how it would help the workload that you currently have

Thats a great idea... I never even considered implementing such methods. But why isnt the SAFA utilising the 'cloud' which is so prominent these days?

Theres software options out there for the SAFA to take advantage of which would handle all teams/player registrations. Clubs could easily submit teamsheets online and referees could do the same. Even if not all but the majority would be able to operate in such a way - surely this must be a better more viable option for all.

Significantly reducing paperwork, easy organisation, each league would have their own system each fed into a central bank at the SAFA. so much more control - not to mention reduction of any possible mistakes.

systems would only cost a few grand... worth it in the long term id say...

Dougie

We may be progressing more than you realise on some of this. Player registration at the SAFA is completely electronic, though the stages before it gets to the SAFA are largely based on bits of paper.

The computer system run by the SFA for SAFA player registrations already has the facility to issue electronic teamlines with the club's registered players already printed on them. The hold up is in respect of the Data Protection legislation - you have to control access to personal records very tightly to comply with the law. There may be other technical issues that I'm not aware of. The return of teamlines by referees (not clubs - clubs don't return team lines) is complicated by the need to have the hard copy in our possession for insurance purposes but there may be ways round it, I don't really know.

Some leagues (my own being one) have had electronic team lines for some time. We also issue all of our fixtures, results and league tables by email. None of this is rocket science, its more a case of setting up the right systems. And don't forget all of the leagues are independent bodies and its up to each one to decide what's best for their situation.

The best and most simplest way forward is a drag and drop system with your team




Example



Player name with photo all in the left hand side so say team x has 18 registered players you can drag the players from that box into the middle box witch is your team also you can have options of submitting bookings from that too


The big problem you have is that you have complicated the site everything needs to be made far more simple rather than all these forums its too much hassle trying to look through everything to get to a relevant topic



in a way we all fail each other as we all dont go to meetings or look for ways to complicate playing football when all that starts i cant be arsed with it all and im sure others are the same

Well that was a post and a half. Starts by telling everybody what's wrong and what's right then finishes saying he can't be arsed.

Facilities and a switch to summer football are the way forward folks, we play summer football up here and with the winter and spring so far being so wet we are lucky if we have played 15 games since the season started in mid april between the two senior associations up here, and a fair few have had to been played on the two astro turfs in the Islands.