Pitch Booking App or What Are Clubs Using

Road703

Hi All

In our club, with a new season approaching, we need to get a new system in place for the booking of 3 pitches by 3 clubs. Would be happy to get an App or something online but would like to know what other clubs are using and if its working well for them.

Thanks in Advance

allybhoy

No app in our club, secretary does a rota every sunday night in PDF for the coming week and emails it to all coaching staff. Its also printed at clubhouse

stooge

skedda

Road703

That Skedda looks pretty comprehensive - I'm guessing ye have more than a couple of pitches to be booked in your club. Probably a bit too expensive for us too.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121658631#Comment_121658631

Up to now, someone has been doing a rota but its gone a bit stressful, so hence when we're looking for an App or an online tool.

Thanks

Uncle Pierre

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121660898#Comment_121660898

Just a note of caution from somebody who's been there and done that -

I've been pitch coordinator in my own club for the past few years. After a couple of years of doing things by hand and sending out a weekly rota, we forked out in 2022 on the annual fee for Skedda, with me thinking it would make things much smoother (free version of Skedda only lets a user - i.e. a manager - see that a pitch is unavailable at a certain time, but doesn't let them see who actually has it booked, so that they could negotiate a swap or a change of times).

I'm dealing with somewhere from 25 to 30 managers here, across all teams for all ages in GAA, Camogie, and LGFA. Spent much of '22 trying to teach them how to use it. Some took to it no problem, while others needed their hand held at almost every step. Few instances where certain people hadn't saved their bookings properly, somebody else then booked them in the belief the space was available, and then two squads turned up at the same time and argued about it. Muggins here would have to be dragged in to try sort it out.

Last year was even worse as some new managers with certain teams were almost completely technologically illiterate, which made only more work for me.

Was all proving far more stressful and a much bigger pain in the you-know-what than just doing it the old-fashioned way, so this year I'm going back to that way, and the Skedda subscription has been cancelled.

kippy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121673511#Comment_121673511

I was going to say something similiar. We have a brilliant person at the end of a generic email address with access to a number of google calendars that are visibile on the clubs website. The co-ordinator would put in the pitch bookings on the calendar as well as contact person of who booked pitch etc. This allows all key people to see what resources are available/free and contact the co-ordinator at that stage to book, or contact the person who has the booking themselves to confirm whether they can move etc etc

There's a lot of work for the person involved but she seems to manage it very well. There's multiple pitches/resources involved, internal coaches and some external organisations that use the process.

I had looked into bookapitch.com (at the time) and a few other apps but could see there were potential issues with all of them whereby a person to co-ordinate the lot/train others would still be needed and the situation may not have been much better.

I think every club is different though and each set of requirements are different. If we lose the co-ordinator we will need to review again but the preference will be to have a person co-ordinate it or accept the potential downsides of automating it. Other issue is once there's another app in place, I'm the go-to for issues. There are rarely any technical issues with the google calendars and mailbox etc!