Pre-kickoff squad eligibility verification checklist
Problem
Before kickoff, the competition administrator checks the submitted team sheet against a printed suspension list and a registration spreadsheet in the back office, ticking each name by hand. Ambiguous cases, such as a loan restriction, a pending suspension or a document that does not quite match, get resolved with a phone call to the league office, and the answer ends up written in the margin or sent as a text to a duty manager. There is no structured record of which checks were run against which name, only a signed team sheet. When eligibility is queried after the match, whoever reviews it works from a signature and a memory of a phone call, not from a record of what was actually verified.
Product idea
A mobile checklist for the back office in the hour before kickoff. The competition administrator loads the submitted team sheet and works through the eligibility items to check against each named player: registration status, suspension or accumulation status, loan or dual-registration restriction, and document match. Each item is ticked, flagged or marked as escalated to the league office, with the resolution and who gave it recorded against the player's name. A single view shows which squad members are still unresolved and locks a clean sign-off page once every name is cleared. It does not rule on eligibility itself and does not interpret registration regulations. It structures the check a person makes and keeps a record of what was asked, who answered, and when.
Who it is for
Competition administrators who run the check, duty managers who field escalation calls, and matchday operations managers who sponsor it as part of kickoff readiness.
Possible first version
A mobile web checklist that loads a team sheet and a manually uploaded registration and suspension list before each fixture. Each named player gets a set of check items with tick, flag or escalate states, a free-text resolution note, and a locked sign-off page once every name clears. Version one has no live connection to the competition management platform or the registration database: both lists are exported and uploaded as CSV before kickoff, and any correction after sign-off is logged as an amendment rather than fed back automatically.
- Build classification
- Workflow application
- Rough effort
- 3-4 week first release
- Roles involved
- Competition administrator, Duty manager, Matchday operations manager
- Relevant to
- League office, Professional club, Collegiate athletics, Women's league
- Systems in play
- Paper team sheets, Competition management platforms, Registration and membership database
- Product framing
- Verify or inspect
Questions we get asked
What do you need from us before the first matchday?
A current registration list and any active suspension or restriction list, exported from whatever system holds them, uploaded as a CSV before each fixture. The tool does not connect to your registration database in version one, so the list is only as current as the export. If your registration data changes daily, that export needs to happen close to kickoff, not the day before.
Does this replace our competition management platform's registration records?
No. The registration and suspension lists stay wherever they are the system of record; this tool imports a snapshot of them for a single fixture. It exists to structure the check someone already does by hand and to keep a record of it, not to become the place where eligibility data lives or is decided.
Our administrator already knows most of this squad by name. Why formalise it?
For a settled squad in a familiar competition, that is often true, and the tool will feel like overhead on an easy week. It earns its keep on the weeks it is not easy: a late loan signing, a suspension that just cleared, a name nobody recognises. The record it leaves is what protects the administrator when a decision is questioned later, rather than relying on them to recall a phone call from three months ago.
What happens if the team sheet changes after we have signed off?
The sign-off page locks, but a locked check is not a final one. A late change reopens the relevant name as an amendment, logged separately with a timestamp and who made it, so the original sign-off is not silently edited. It does not attempt to auto-resolve the new name; someone still has to check it.
Is this your workflow?
Tell us one sports workflow that still runs on paper, spreadsheets, WhatsApp or an outdated system. We will map it and show you what a simpler product looks like.
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