Guide for League organisers

Introduction

MMM recommends a simple step-by-step process to ensure a smooth and efficient experience each season. Whilst there will be more preparatory work the first time a county runs their leagues on MMM, the process in subsequent years will be much easier. The process consists of the following steps:

1. Set up a league system for your county
2. Ensure all participating clubs have their contact details up to date
3. Invite clubs to nominate their teams or set them up on their behalf, ensuring captains are registered on MMM
4. Prepare county invoices to the clubs
5. Create the leagues for all divisions needed
6. Set fixture scheduling criteria and invite captains and clubs to do the same
7. Schedule the fixtures and invite clubs and captains to review and adjust as necessary
8. Set and announce the commencement of play

These steps are explained in greater detail in the following sections. Unless otherwise stated, all your actions take place within Manage events, ensuring you have chosen your county and the league system in the two selection boxes.

Set up a league system for your county

For the first year, contact MMM at support@managemymatch.com to discuss your needs and format. We can quickly setup your league system based on your requirements. This includes telling us what clubs participate so that we can ensure those clubs are properly represented in MMM. We will also need to assist you in setting up your own Stripe account on MMM so that you can invoice and receive payments from clubs.

Once we've done this (or on subsequent years) you can create next year's league simply by clicking the New tab and choosing the right season.

Ensure all participating clubs have their contact details up to date

Next season's league event should now be in Pending state. It should remain in this state until you are happy that:

1. All participating clubs are listed under the Clubs tab. Inform MMM of any participating club that is not listed and we will add that club in
2. All clubs all have their official email and phone number correctly entered. Emails are particularly important because MMM communicates club team entry invoicing to this email. If the email is missing or incorrect you need to ask the club to update their official email address on MMM (Details tab of Manage club)
3. Each club has nominated their club captain - this is necessary as your point of contact with the club concerning any administrative matter regarding the leagues

Normally we would recommend leaving the clubs to nominate their teams (in the next step), but you can add them in yourself at this stage (or the next) under the Teams tab. However, since captains need to be registered on MMM, you may find that you cannot set the captains at this stage and you will be set as the captain in the meantime. Note: MMM automatically sets the teams from last year when the event is moved into the Open stage - so adding teams whilst in Pending stage is definitely not recommended for subsequent years.

Nominating club captains

This step can only be done by a club official and is important as club captains are your primary contact with the club. In MMM they are called club representatives for the event.

You can very easily request a club to do this (if not already done) by clicking Request under the representatives column in the Clubs tab. You'll get a pro-forma email to the club with the relevant request and instructions. Here's an example of the preset email text:

With all club captains set, you'll be able to message all of them at once at any time going forward by clicking on the speech icon in the Representatives column header under the Clubs tab. You can also message the club captains individually with the speech icon next to their name in the listing.

Invite clubs to nominate their teams or set them up on their behalf

First, progress the event to the next stage - Open. This makes the event visible to clubs and allows members to apply for team membership. Two things need to be accomplished when the event is in Open stage:

1. Club and team captains must be registered with MMM and linked to the club that they belong
2. All teams must be set up with their individual captains nominated

Note: For the 2nd and subsequent years, MMM will automatically set the same teams up as there were in the previous year. So you (or the clubs) need only to make adjustments based on team changes year on year.

Team captains can also make a start on building their squads, though this can happen later as well. All squad members must eventually be registered on MMM and linked to their club, so the sooner this process starts the better. For clubs using MMM as their management system this should not be an issue - everyone will likely be in the system already. Either way, for subsequent years, most participants would already be registered with MMM.

These two action points above, are covered in more detail as follows:

Club and team captains must be registered with MMM

As the organiser, you can help direct new people to register by sending them the appropriate registration link - click the Refer button against the relevant club under the Clubs tab to copy some sample text and then paste it into an email. Here's an example of what you could copy & paste:

All teams must be set up

Clubs can set up their own teams by going to the Teams tab of Hosted events. Having chosen the county leagues event, they can add or change their teams and they also get to see other club's teams.

You can set up their teams for them as well under the Teams tab. You will need to know their captain in each case (and that captain needs to have registered with MMM).

Either you or the club should also nominate the intended division for the team. As organiser, however, you will be auditing and setting this carefully in light of last season's results.

Prepare county invoices to the clubs

Choose the Invoices tab and set the price of entry for each team. Then click the red refresh button to get MMM to talk to Stripe and set up the invoicing system. The screen should show which clubs can be invoiced with their total. Only clubs with valid email addresses can be invoiced. When you perform the final step in this season's league preparation (moving the event to In play stage), the invoices will be automatically sent and payments will be automatically processed by Stripe and paid into the county's bank account.

Create the leagues for all divisions needed

First, progress the event to the next stage - In preparation. With all teams nominated, we can now build the leagues. We recommend not starting this step until team entry has been thoroughly confirmed - generally quite close to the start of the season.

Click the orange Review button next to Number of joiners to go into Manage draws for this event. Creating the leagues is essentially the same process as creating individual leagues or tournament draws and involves selecting the blue action buttons from top to bottom:

1. First button orders the teams by their respective divisions (you'll see them ordered in the listing below) - you can make further adjustments in the listing as desired.
2. Second button sets the divisional break points - again you make drag & drop adjustments in the listing as necessary
3. Third button - builds the divisional draws from the current proposed draws as listed
4. Fourth button - confirms the divisional draws resulting in all the fixtures being created (this can also be done in the Draw confirmation tab)

Set fixture scheduling criteria and invite captains and clubs to do the same

With the event still In preparation, we can now set up the conditions for the automatic scheduling of all fixtures. Select the Schedule tab.

On the left you will see the event, division and teams listed with 3 action columns:

1. Speech icon - sends a message
2. Cog wheel - sets scheduling criteria (mainly the week-day for matches)
3. Calendar - sets dates to be excluded from the scheduling

Each can be set at one of 3 levels:

1. Event wide
2. Divisional
3. Individual team

The speech icon will allow you to message captains and deputies as appropriate. If selected at the Event level, all captains and deputies will get the message. Against the division, captains and deputies of teams within that division. Against the team, captain and deputies of that team only.

For scheduling criteria, a team setting overrides a divisional setting and a divisional setting overrides the event setting. For exclusion dates, they are additive - excluded dates at the event level will apply to all fixtures, at the divisional level to only fixtures for that division and at the team level to only fixtures involving that team (both home & away).

Armed with this capability, set your criteria and exclusion dates as appropriate. Be aware that clubs and teams should be encouraged to do the same (at a club and team level). We recommend you message them all to do so.

This means you should not have to get involved in setting criteria and date exclusions at a club or team level. But you can still view and change them if necessary. At the club level, you can see their settings by clicking on the cog and date icons against the club listed in the Clubs tab. At the team level you can see and change them in the Schedule tab.

If you do not wish for clubs or teams to be able to override your week-day setting then you can prevent this by selecting the relevant prompt in the criteria settings window after having clicked the cog button.

In the ideal scenario, you want to see that all teams have seen and reviewed their criteria and exclusion dates. To that end they (and you) can confirm scheduling criteria at each level. Confirmed criteria will show a green tick next to the cog icon to give quick feedback as to who has engaged in this way. The message window even gives you an option to send a "please review and confirm" message to all those who have not yet confirmed their criteria.

Schedule the fixtures and invite clubs and captains to review and adjust as necessary

With the event still In preparation and with all scheduling criteria and exclusion dates set and confirmed, we are now in a position to tell the system to schedule the fixtures. In the Schedule tab on the right is a summary of what has or has not been scheduled. Click the Schedule button next to the count of unscheduled fixtures and wait for the system set the schedules up.

The panel on the right will indicate the summary status of all fixture scheduling. You can cancel scheduled dates and redo them at any point. You can manually allocate any date for fixtures that cannot be automatically scheduled as well as remove any specific scheduled fixture and reset the date. For more detail on how this works refer to this article.

Use the Fixtures tab that presents a table or calendar view of fixtures for all divisions or one division or one club or one team.

While you are setting the fixture schedule, clubs and teams cannot see the schedule. They only see "locked" dates. Once you are happy with the scheduling, use the control panel to lock the dates so that they become visible to all. It is at this point that you can invite all clubs and captains to review their fixture schedule. They then have the tools (as do you) to negotiate alternative dates in specific cases as necessary. If you use the message icon to send the message, you'll find a dedicated option "Confirm schedule" that presets the message text as appropriate.

Set and announce the commencement of play

On the date that the playing season starts, you can move the event into the In Play stage. Captains and teams can then engage with MMM to set their lineups and score their matches. You could announce the commencement of play if you wanted by sending a message to all clubs and captains.