Tournament manual

Everything a committee has to decide to put a walking football tournament on, in roughly the order it has to be decided, and which of it this site does for you.

What is here

1. Who is running it
2. The shape of the day
3. What it costs, what you charge
4. Grants and sponsors
5. Insurance, permits and the risk assessment
6. Opening entries
7. Telling people
8. Photographs, and asking first
9. Rules and match length
10. Discipline
11. Referees
12. The draw
13. Kit clashes
14. The ground
15. If somebody gets hurt
16. Trophies
17. Phones and signal
18. The briefing
19. On the day
20. When something changes
21. Results and what people keep
22. The review
23. Worth reading alongside this

This is the whole job. For which button to press, the other guides are step by step, and this points at them as it goes.

1. Who is running it

Four jobs need a name against them before anything else is decided: somebody who owns the day and answers the phone, somebody who owns the money, somebody who owns the referees, and somebody who owns the ground. They can be four people or two, but an unnamed job is a job nobody does.

Only two of them need a login here. The person who owns the day is the organiser, and the person who owns the referees is the head referee; both are set on the tournament and both unlock the screens the rest of this describes. Everybody else, the gate and the barbecue and the first aid, needs a name on a list and no account at all.

Ask about access early

Wheelchair access to the pitches and the toilets, somewhere quiet, and something to eat for people who cannot eat what the barbecue is cooking. These are cheap to arrange in March and impossible to arrange on the Friday.

2. The shape of the day

Decide the divisions before anything else, because everything downstream counts from them: over 50s, over 60s, over 70s, women's, mixed. Here each one is a grade inside the tournament, and each grade carries its own format, its own entry limit and its own match length.

Four formats are built in, and the choice is per grade rather than for the whole festival: everyone plays everyone once, home and away, single elimination knockout, or Swiss, where each round is paired on how the teams are standing. A grade of four or five teams almost always wants the first. Knockouts are for the end of a long day, not the start of a short one.

How much football fits is arithmetic, and it is worth doing before you promise anybody anything:

pitches × games per hour × (hours − lunch) = games in the day

Two pitches, three games an hour, six hours with a half hour off, is thirty-three games. Aim for every team to play at least five, or people have driven two hours for forty minutes of football.

3. What it costs, what you charge

Write the costs down first and set the fee from them, not the other way about. The list is nearly always: the ground, insurance, referees, trophies, first aid, balls and bibs, and something for the people who ran it to eat.

The Money screen takes a fee per team, a fee per player, and who pays the player fee, and then shows you who has paid without anybody keeping a spreadsheet. Run your tournament covers it properly.

4. Grants and sponsors

Not something this site does, and worth saying so. Councils, community banks, RSLs and local businesses all fund this sort of thing, and the lead times are long: a council grant applied for in June is not money you have in August. Ask early, and ask for a specific thing: a set of goals, the ground hire, the medals. Asking for a number gets you nothing.

5. Insurance, permits and the risk assessment

Public liability for the event and personal accident cover for the players, and the certificates sent to every visiting club before they travel. Check whether visiting clubs are covered by their own association or by yours, because the answer differs by state and finding out afterwards is the worst time. If you have a caterer or anyone else trading on site, they need their own cover and you should see it.

Two more that clubs forget until somebody asks. Ring your state federation and ask whether an event like this needs their permission or a permit: the answer varies, it is a short phone call, and it is much easier before you advertise than after. And write a risk assessment, because your council, your insurer or the ground may want to see one, and because doing it finds things such as the car park that floods and the gate that is locked at four, while there is still time.

Ask the council early

A larger event on council ground can need notification, and the council may have to talk to police or the fire service before they can answer. Do not assume somebody else is doing it. Agree in writing who is.

6. Opening entries

There is no form to build. Each grade has an invitation picker that emails a club a link needing no login, and clubs can also ask to enter from their own account. Set how many teams the grade takes and when entries close, and it refuses the fifth entry to a four team grade rather than letting you regret it later. Everything past that goes on a waitlist, in the order people asked.

Ask for as little as you can get away with. Name of the club, name of a contact, a phone number. Dates of birth and medical conditions are somebody else's data to look after, and a form that asks for them is a form clubs fill in slowly.

7. Telling people

Save the date about six months out, entries open about four, then something every month until it is close and every fortnight once it is. The tournament has a public page from the moment it exists, so there is always one link to send, and it stays right as things change.

Squads have their own link and a code to scan, which is what to put in the group chat and on the clubhouse wall. Local radio and the local paper will take a walking football story more often than clubs expect, because it is a good one.

8. Photographs, and asking first

The photographs taken on the day are the best advertising the club will ever have, which is exactly why it is worth getting this right rather than quietly. Say at the briefing and on the entry that photographs will be taken and where they might appear, and give people a way to say no that does not involve making a scene: a word to the organiser, and a note passed to whoever is holding the camera.

Anybody under eighteen needs a parent or carer to agree, in writing, before their photograph goes anywhere. That is rare in walking football and it is not never: juniors turn up with grandparents. Do not put names to faces without asking, and do not photograph anybody who has said no, including in the background of somebody else.

Who is holding the camera

Name one or two people rather than leaving it to everybody. They know who has opted out, they can be found afterwards, and the pictures end up in one place instead of thirty phones.

9. Rules and match length

Settle the rules a month out and send them with the fixtures, not on the day. The laws are the IFAB laws with walking football's own additions, and there is no offside; the laws are on this site and can be sent as a link.

There is also no rule that says somebody has to win. A festival where every grade plays five games and everybody goes home with a medal is a perfectly good day, and for a first tournament it is an easier one to run than a knockout with a final nobody has left time for.

Match length is set per grade, the number of halves and the minutes in a half, and what you set is what the referee's phone counts down, so the clock on the pitch and the clock in the draw cannot disagree. Twenty minute games with ten minutes between them is the common shape. Decide the lunch break at the same time, because it comes out of the arithmetic in section 2.

10. Discipline

Have a written code of conduct, send it with the entry, and name two or three people who will decide on the day if something happens. Decide in advance what a red card means at your tournament, the rest of that day or the rest of the festival, so nobody is inventing it while people wait.

Cards are recorded against the person, not just the match, so a player's record travels with them and a committee asking "has this happened before" has an answer. The referee gives them on their own screen; nobody writes anything down.

11. Referees

One per pitch, plus at least one spare, plus somebody to cover lunch. A two pitch day wants four people, not two, and the fourth is the one who makes the day pleasant rather than frantic.

The tournament has a referee panel: add people who already have an account, or type an email and it links itself up when they join. On the day they check in from their own phone, and if nobody has said they are ready five minutes before a kick off, the head referee and the organiser see it and can give the game to somebody who is not already on a pitch. Manage a panel of referees is the how-to.

12. The draw

Press the button. The draw is generated from the grade's format and the teams in it, with pitches and kick off times, and it publishes to a page anybody can read without logging in. There is nothing to export, nothing to paste into a spreadsheet and no second copy to keep in step.

A grade with three teams or fewer is not a grade; merge it with the one next to it and say so in the programme. Nobody minds playing up an age group. Everybody minds driving two hours to play the same two teams three times.

Say how a group is separated before anybody plays, and say it in the rules you send out. The table here orders on points, then goal difference, then goals scored. If two sides are still level after all three it puts them in alphabetical order, which is a way of displaying them and not a way of deciding anything. Points for a win, a draw and a loss are yours to set.

Do not let the alphabet award a trophy

If something real hangs on separating two sides level on all three, decide in advance what settles it, whether that is the game between them, a shootout, or a coin toss in front of both captains, and put it in the rules. Deciding it afterwards is how a good day gets remembered badly.

Draw it early, publish it late

Generate the draw as soon as entries close so you can see whether it works, but expect one club to pull out in the last week. Redrawing is a button; it is telling everybody that takes the time.

13. Kit clashes

Every squad sets its own shirt colours, and they are drawn on the fixtures and on the referee's screen, so a clash is visible in the draw rather than discovered at kick off. Bring two sets of bibs anyway. Ask clubs to number their shirts if they can: a referee reporting an incident an hour later cannot write "the tall one".

14. The ground

None of this is software and all of it decides whether people come back. Shade or a marquee for teams who have travelled. Toilets that are open, and somebody who knows who to ring when they are not. Water. Somewhere to sit that is not the ground. Parking, and what happens when it rains and the overflow paddock is soft.

First aid: a kit, a defibrillator, and everybody told where both are at the briefing rather than when they are needed. If you can get St John or a trained volunteer for the day, do. Walking football is a sport played by people with a median age well over sixty; a defibrillator is not paranoia.

15. If somebody gets hurt

Write this down before the day and give it to everybody at the briefing. It is four lines: the street address an ambulance should be given, where the defibrillator is, who is calling triple zero, and who is going to the gate to wave them in. A ground everybody knows the name of is not an address, and the two minutes spent explaining where you are is the two minutes that matter.

Keep the road in clear enough for a vehicle. Know before the day whether the gate is locked and who has the key. And write down what happened the same day, while it is accurate: who, when, what, who saw it, and what was done. An injury written up a week later is a note nobody can rely on, including the person who wrote it.

This is the one to rehearse

Walking football is played by people with a median age well over sixty. A defibrillator on a wall that nobody can find is the same as no defibrillator. Say where it is out loud, at the briefing, every time.

16. Trophies

Medallions for everyone in the winning side beat one trophy that lives in a cabinet. A perpetual trophy with a plaque added each year costs once. Work out where and when the presentation happens before the day, because a presentation nobody is told about happens to six people in a car park.

The awards worth having are not always the football ones: best dressed side, the club that travelled furthest, fair play voted by the referees.

17. Phones and signal

Referees run the games from their own phones. The screen is built for one thumb in sunlight, it keeps the screen awake and locks to portrait, and it works with no signal at all: everything done on the pitch is kept on the phone and sent up when there is a bar of reception again. A regional ground with no coverage is the case it was built for, not a case it fails.

Approve each referee's phone against this tournament before the day, not on it. Chargers and a power board are worth more than a spare ball.

18. The briefing

Half an hour, the evening before or first thing, with referees and one person from each club. Welcome, the shape of the day, where everything is, the rules you have settled, how the draw works, when the presentation is, where the first aid and the defibrillator are, and who to find when something goes wrong. Give them the link to the draw at the same time so nobody is asking you for kick off times all morning.

19. On the day

The traditional four jobs are the organiser, the timekeeper, the scorekeeper and the discipline committee. Two of those are now the referee's phone: it runs the clock and it records the score, the cards and the shootout, and what it records appears on the public page as it happens. Nobody stands at a whiteboard with a marker.

That leaves the organiser free to do the job that actually needs a person: finding the side that has not turned up, moving a game, deciding something. And it leaves the discipline committee free to be three people rather than three people also doing the scores. An organiser on match day and A referee on match day are the two to send round the night before.

20. When something changes

Something always does. A side arrives with six players, a referee is stuck on the motorway, a pitch floods. A match can be marked postponed or cancelled and it says so on the page instead of vanishing, which is the difference between a draw people trust and a draw people ring you about.

A game with nobody on it can be given to any referee who is not already on a pitch at that time, from the same screen, in about four taps.

21. Results and what people keep

Results are already up. Every match has its own page with the sides as they were named, the goals and cards in the order they happened, and the shootout if there was one, and it stays there, so a player can show somebody what they did in September for as long as the club wants it kept.

Send the link the same evening, while people still have the day in their heads. That link is also next year's marketing, and it is better than a flyer because it is true.

22. The review

Within a fortnight, while it is still honest: what worked, what did not, what you would change, and what it actually cost against what you thought it would. Ask the clubs too, in three questions rather than fifteen.

Then keep it. The second tournament is enormously easier than the first, and the reason is this page with your notes on it.

23. Worth reading alongside this

Three documents worth the hour before you run your first one. Between them they carry the sample rules, the consent and incident forms, the budget sheet, the score card and the safety detail that nobody should be writing from scratch.

Central Coast Walking Football: WF Tournament Manual
Australian, walking football specific, and the closest thing to a standard running order for a festival here. Strongest on the committee, the money and the things a venue has to have, and it comes with a checklist and a printable score card that fits a referee's pocket. This manual follows its running order, and two things in section 2 are its ideas rather than ours: how to work out how much football fits in a day, and five games a team as the floor for a one day tournament.
The FA: How to Run a Tournament Guide (PDF, 31 pages, March 2021)
Not walking football and not Australian, so ignore what it says about sanctioning and age groups. Worth having anyway for its appendices, which are the paperwork almost nobody writes from scratch well: sample tournament rules, a code of conduct, accident and incident forms, a photo consent form, an emergency action plan and a budget sheet. Adapt them rather than inventing your own.
The WFA: Guide to Setting Up and Running a Walking Football Club (PDF, 24 pages)
About running a club rather than a tournament, and useful here for the safety and inclusion detail the other two assume you know: weighting the goals down, asking players to declare an injury or condition to the organiser, warming up properly, and not turning anybody away for arriving in jeans.