Trial and guest player eligibility check-in
Problem
Academy trial nights bring in players who are not yet in the club's system: a parent hands over a paper consent form and a medical questionnaire at the gate, or emails them earlier in the week and they sit in an inbox nobody checks before kick-off. The coach running the session has no reliable way to confirm, pitch side, that a given trialist's forms are actually on file, that they are in the right age group, or that a medical questionnaire has flagged something relevant, before putting them into a contact drill. On a busy trial night spread across several pitches, with one welfare officer trying to cover all of them, the check becomes whether a parent handed something in, not whether anyone confirmed it. A trialist who slips into a session without the paperwork being checked is only discovered afterwards, if at all.
Product idea
A pitch-side check-in list for trial and guest sessions. The welfare officer or academy administrator loads the night's expected trialists from a roster, marks each one's consent form and medical questionnaire as received and complete, and flags any mismatch in age group or a medical note that needs a conversation before training starts. The coach taking the session sees a simple cleared or not cleared status per name instead of a stack of paper, and cannot start a session with an unresolved trialist showing as not cleared without a recorded override and a name against it. It does not replace the consent form itself or store medical detail: the questionnaire stays with the club's existing paper or registration process, and this only tracks whether it has been checked.
Who it is for
Welfare officers and academy administrators who check trial forms before a session, and the academy coaches who run it pitch side. Typically sponsored by the coach developer or academy manager responsible for safeguarding.
Possible first version
A mobile checklist for a single trial or guest session: a roster uploaded from a spreadsheet with a status field per player for consent form and medical questionnaire, a toggle to mark each as received, a flag field for anything the questionnaire raises, and a sign-off by the checking staff member's name and timestamp. The coach sees only cleared, not cleared or flagged per name. Out of scope for version one: integration with the club's registration or athlete management system, storage of medical detail itself, and automated document scanning.
- Build classification
- Micro-tool
- Rough effort
- 1-2 week prototype
- Roles involved
- Academy coach, Coach developer, Welfare officer
- Relevant to
- Academy & youth, Professional club, Federation / governing body
- Systems in play
- Paper consent and medical forms, Registration and membership database, Spreadsheets
- Product framing
- Verify or inspect
Questions we get asked
What do we need in place before this could run on a trial night?
A roster of the players expected that night, even a simple name and age group list from a spreadsheet, and someone designated to check consent forms and medical questionnaires before the session as they already would. The tool adds a structured record of that check; it does not create the check itself. If a club has no process for confirming forms before a trial starts, this makes the gap visible rather than closing it on its own.
Does this replace the registration and membership system we already use for our full squads?
No. Registered players already have a record in that system and do not need this. This is for the population that system is not built around: trialists and guests who are not yet registered and may never be. Version one has no integration with the registration database at all; the roster is entered by hand for each trial night, which is deliberate given how small and irregular that list usually is.
Our welfare officer already checks the forms with a clipboard, why add a screen?
Because the clipboard's record lives with one person and stops being checkable the moment they move to another pitch or go home. A coach running a session on one pitch has no way to see what the welfare officer confirmed on another pitch twenty minutes earlier. This does not change what gets checked. It makes the result of that check visible to the person who actually needs it when a trialist walks onto the grass.
What happens if a trialist turns up who was never on the roster?
They show as not on the list rather than cleared, which is the correct default. Staff can add them on the spot and complete the same consent and medical check before marking them cleared, but nobody gets waved through by default because the list did not anticipate them. The tool works offline once the roster is loaded, so a pitch with poor signal does not stop the check-in, and entries sync when a connection is available.
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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