Capping published scores
Youth and recreational tournaments produce results like 12-0. They are real, they were played, and nobody wants them on a page the losing side's parents are reading on their phone.
Until now the ways out were both damaging. Entering a score that never happened corrupts the standings, the seeding and the advancement at once. Publishing nothing at all hides the tournament from everyone following it.
A published-margin cap gates the last step instead — what the page prints — and leaves everything upstream of it alone. If your competition rules cap the margin as well, the same cap can count in the standings.
Setting a cap
Open Settings → Public page and find Largest margin shown publicly.
Type the biggest goal margin the public site may print, between 1 and 50. Leave it empty — the field reads No cap — to publish every result exactly as it was entered.
The field saves as soon as you leave it. It is not part of the Save public view draft, because it changes what the world can see and should not sit unsaved next to a logo URL. A value the setting cannot take is dropped and the field snaps back to what is stored.
What a cap changes
The losing side's goals are kept and only the winner's are brought down, so a team that scored is never shown as having been kept scoreless.
| Entered | Cap of 3 | Cap of 1 |
|---|---|---|
| 10-0 | 3-0 | 1-0 |
| 12-5 | 8-5 | 6-5 |
| 4-2 | 4-2 | 3-2 |
| 2-2 | 2-2 | 2-2 |
A result inside the cap is published untouched, and a draw is always published as it stands.
There is no cap of 0. The smallest cap is 1, because 0 would publish every win as a draw — not a softer result but a different one, and one that would contradict the bracket beside it.
Counting the cap in the standings
Many youth tournaments write the cap into the competition itself: goals beyond the margin do not count. Once a cap is set, two choices appear under the field:
- Only shorten the published score — the default. The cap changes what the page prints and nothing else.
- Also count at most 3 goals per match in goal difference — the number follows your cap. Each match then counts at most the cap towards goal difference, goals for and goals against.
The goals are capped by the same rule as the published scoreline — the loser's goals kept, the winner's brought down — so the table adds up against the fixtures printed above it. A team that lost 0-6, 0-6 and 0-12 shows a goal difference of −24 on real goals, and −9 with a cap of 3.
With the second choice on, the capped margin is the competition's, everywhere a group is ranked: the group tables on the public site and in the admin app, the tiebreakers including head-to-head and the mini-table, the knockout draw, bracket places filled in when a group finishes, and the mobile app. Points, wins and draws do not move: a capped win is still a win.
The score you entered, every admin screen, team strength and penalty shootouts keep the real result either way.
Switching mid-tournament
Switching between the two choices — or changing or clearing the cap while it counts in the standings — recalculates every group's table straight away, and can reorder groups that are already played. Once a knockout has been drawn from those tables, the change is refused, because the bracket would keep the teams the old table put through. Decide before the draw, or clear the knockout bracket first.
What a cap never changes
With Only shorten the published score, the cap is applied where a public page is built, never where a result is stored or read for a decision. Every one of these keeps the real numbers:
- The score you entered. Live scoring, the match list and every admin screen always show the real result. Nothing is rewritten in the database.
- The group table. Points, goals for, goals against and goal difference are all calculated from real goals, so the published table still ranks the group the way the competition decides it. A capped table could put a team top that does not actually advance.
- Tiebreakers. Head-to-head, goal difference and goals scored all read the real result.
- Knockout advancement. Who goes through is decided by the entered score. A cap of 1 or more always keeps the winner ahead, so a capped fixture can never turn into a draw.
- Team strength. The margin-aware rating and a calibration round ranked on rating both read the entered score. A 9-0 is evidence that a 3-0 is not, which is the whole point of that ranking.
- Penalty shootouts. Shootout tallies are not goals and are never capped.
With the cap counted in the standings, the group table, its tiebreakers and the knockout draw move to the capped margin; everything else on this list still holds.
Where the capped score appears
- The public tournament site — fixture lists, results and match pages
- The mobile app
- The private preview link, so what you check before publishing is what visitors get
- The calendar feed teams and parents subscribe to
Goal difference and the scorelines
With Only shorten the published score, a group table's goal-difference column no longer sums the scorelines printed above it. That is deliberate: the alternative is a published ranking that is wrong.
The public standings table says so itself. Under the table, beside the abbreviation key, readers get a line explaining that scorelines are published with a margin of at most so many goals and that goal difference still counts the goals actually scored. An unexplained mismatch reads as a bug; a disclosed one reads as a policy.
With the cap counted in the standings, the columns add up against the scorelines, and the line under the table says instead that each match counts a margin of at most so many goals, in the published scorelines and in goal difference.
The cap covers fixture lists, match pages and calendar feeds. Scorelines printed on the knockout bracket cards still show the result as entered, so a lopsided quarter-final is visible there even with a cap set.
Changing or removing a cap
The cap is applied as each page is served, not stored against a result, so it is retroactive in both directions. Lower it and every result already published — including yesterday's — is printed to the new margin on the next page load. Clear the field and every real score comes back.
With the cap counted in the standings, changing or clearing it also recalculates every group's table, so once a knockout has been drawn it is refused like the switch itself — see switching mid-tournament.
A cap is a fairness measure, not a secret. Coaches compare the page against their own sheet within the hour, and an organizer who mentioned the cap at the captains' meeting gets a nod. One who did not gets a phone call about a broken website.
See also customizing the public page and standings and tiebreakers.