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Teams and clubs

The team list is the input everything else depends on. It is also the part most likely to arrive as a spreadsheet from six different club secretaries.

Getting teams in​

Import a spreadsheet. Import teams on Manage → Teams offers two tabs, Google Sheet and Excel file. On Google Sheet, connect a sheet shared as Anyone with the link can view, map its columns to team name, category, club, contact email and strength, and preview the result before anything is created. The import is re-runnable: sync again after clubs have edited the sheet and FairGame shows a difference — added, changed, removed — rather than duplicating everything. Teams that are in the tournament but missing from the document are listed separately, each with what deleting it would take along; teams with no matches yet are pre-selected for removal, and nothing is deleted until you confirm. This works the same whether the teams first came from the setup wizard, were typed in by hand, or came from an earlier import. Teams that registered themselves, or that have withdrawn, are never removed by an import. A row that names a category but no group joins that category without a group, so a sync never changes groups you have already drawn. When the category already has groups, the preview warns about each such team: place it on the category's Organize groups board, where it waits under Unassigned, before you schedule. The Summary checklist and the Schedule board keep counting it — 1 team not in a group — until you do. When the sync finishes, the result line repeats the counts and every warning, and Sync history lists each run as Completed — or Needs review when teams in the tournament were not in the sheet and were left in place. An import creates teams, not matches: once the roster is in, the Summary checklist's teams step reads Generate fixtures for your teams and its button opens Generate all fixtures on Manage → Categories, and the empty Schedule board offers the same Generate fixtures button — use either before you schedule. That holds for a roster whose categories have groups, or are small enough to play as one (up to eight teams). A larger category imported without groups has to be drawn into groups first: the teams step then reads Place every team in a group, the empty Schedule board reads Your teams are in — now organize the groups, and both open the Groups page; a fixture run leaves such a category alone rather than making one group of every team.

An Excel file. When the roster is private, or lives on your computer rather than in Google, use the Excel file tab — Upload an Excel file — and choose an .xlsx file; the first sheet is read, and nothing has to be shared online. Put the column names in the first row: only Team name is required, and Club, Category and Group place each team. A Strength column (1 is strongest) sets each team's strength — in the setup wizard it also seeds the group draw. A blank cell starts a new team at 3 and leaves an existing team's strength as it is. Icelandic or reworded headers are matched automatically. The preview marks each row as new, updated or unchanged, warns about rows naming a category or group that does not exist yet — create it first, or import and place those teams later — and lists teams that are in the tournament but not in the file, exactly as a sheet sync does. Nothing changes until you confirm the import. Upload the file again after edits and only the differences are applied.

Names that look like numbers or dates. A team called 1988-9 or 2013-14 is something a spreadsheet will happily turn into a date. Set the team-name column to plain text before you type (Google Sheets: Format → Number → Plain text; Excel: Text) — FairGame imports what the sheet displays and flags a name that still looks like a date in the preview, but it cannot recover what you typed.

This is the right route for anything above roughly twenty teams, and the only sane route above a hundred.

Enter them by hand. Fine for a small event. Teams can be typed or pasted in bulk and dragged into categories and groups.

Let clubs register themselves. Open the tournament for registration and share a link; coaches submit their own teams and you approve them. See registration.

What a team carries​

  • Category — required. A team plays in exactly one.
  • Group — assigned during setup, or on the Organize groups tab of the category's page under Manage → Categories — or with Add teams on a group there. See categories and groups. Changing a team's category or group from Edit team on its own page deletes its unplayed fixtures — FairGame asks you to confirm first, and you generate fixtures again afterwards. A team that has already played cannot move; use Withdraw team instead.
  • Club — optional but valuable; see below.
  • Contact email — the address that receives announcements and the mis-rating report. Worth collecting at registration, because chasing it during the tournament is miserable.
  • Strength — an optional seeding number (1 is strongest) used by formats that seed the draw.

Open a team to see its standings and matches. Each match shows both team names in home–away order, matching the score, with the venue and pitch beside the kickoff, so two venues' pitch 4 never read the same. Select a match to open its details.

Why clubs matter​

Linking a team to a club is not only about showing the right crest. The club is a real constraint in scheduling:

  • A club's teams can be kept from playing at the same time. A small club sending four teams usually shares coaches, parents and a minibus. Scheduling those four teams into the same timeslot is technically valid and practically impossible.
  • A club can be kept from refereeing its own matches, where clubs supply referees.

Neither happens unless FairGame knows which club a team belongs to, which is why setup pushes you to resolve club links before you schedule.

Manage → Clubs is the club directory, with branding and registration controls. It lists every club in your organization; the number beside the title counts those with a team in this tournament. Manage → Teams shows its total the same way, and clicking a column header sorts names in your language's alphabetical order.

A club can also have a Club contact email — usually the head coach. Set it with Edit club. It receives announcements and the mis-rating report for every team in the club, alongside each team's own contact, so a team without a contact of its own is still reached through its club. Clubs belong to your organization, so the address carries over to every tournament you run. Other organizers never see it, and neither do coaches registering a team.

Because clubs belong to your organization rather than one tournament, Delete club removes the club from every tournament you run. Its teams stay in their tournaments but lose their club, and the confirmation says how many teams and tournaments that touches. A club with tournament registrations can't be deleted: deleting it would also delete those registrations and their payment records.

When a team's club is not stated outright, FairGame proposes one from the team name — Valur B is probably Valur. Every proposal is flagged for review, and links that came from your own spreadsheet's club column are never overridden by a guess.

The Clubs step shows straightforward name matches after one batch lookup. AI checks only the unresolved names in the background, so you can review and edit the first suggestions immediately. Your edits and spreadsheet club links take priority over late suggestions and Auto-match again.

Review them. A crest on the wrong entrant is the kind of mistake that gets screenshotted.

Strength​

Every team carries a strength, 1 being the strongest. It is what the group draw and the bracket are seeded from, and it is optional — leaving everything at 3 is a legitimate choice, though then the draw has nothing to go on. After the tournament, team strength and fairness shows which registrations turned out to be wrong, and can tell those clubs so.

Withdrawals​

A team that pulls out before the tournament should be removed rather than left in the draw — its fixtures would otherwise be scheduled and appear on the public site. Delete team on the team's own page, or in the ··· menu at the end of its row on Manage → Teams, removes it together with its unplayed fixtures: the confirmation says how many fixtures go with it, and the rest of the category's fixtures stay as they are. Do it before you publish, and announce the change if you have already published. A team placed in a knockout draw can't be deleted until that draw is cleared. Once a team has played a match it can no longer be deleted: its delete button is greyed out, and hovering, focusing or tapping it says why — in the row menu, the reason sits under Delete team. Use Withdraw team instead — played results stay and the remaining fixtures are cancelled.

To start the roster over — the wrong file imported, or a test run cleared before the real one — Delete all teams in the ··· menu beside New team removes every team in the tournament in one go, with their unplayed fixtures. The confirmation counts the teams and fixtures that go and the teams that stay: a team that has played a match, or is placed in a knockout draw, is kept, and the message afterwards says how many. Everything else goes in a single step, so a failure part-way never leaves half a roster.

Club and team editors​

Create or edit a club in the compact dialog. Type its name to search the shared club catalogue used by the setup wizard; picking a match links the club and uses its available crest. Manual entry remains available if lookup fails. Choose image or Change image opens the file picker; Use an image URL is an optional alternative. Uploads retain the 2 MB limit. The Clubs directory has no search box.

Team creation and editing use a drawer. Club, category, group and strength stay visible; optional email and phone are under Team contact, which opens initially for existing contact values. Individual competitor fields, group locks and move confirmations remain unchanged. The Teams page keeps its search. Unsaved changes require confirmation before closing.

Paste a list uses the same compact editor. The parsed team count stays visible, and closing an unsaved list requires confirmation.

A club’s Add teams action also uses the shared editor. Selection stays until assignment or confirmed discard.