to be irritated that football fixtures aren't available in advance?

My kids both played football and my son's team had the teamer app which was great as you could see all the matches for the season and whether it is home or away.

My daughter's team didn't have teamer but like pps have said if the club are FA registered you can look at the fixture list on the FA

The few ppl above saying "I do get why it happens" Really? I don't. I don't get it at all. Kids sports are a profitable business, and these businesses don't have any valid excuses for what amounts to bad organisational event management. Even entirely volunteer run charities manage to schedule their entire year's events, some with many hundreds of volunteers and staff and venues, not to mention every other event management team, in pretty much every type of organisation I can think of. For any excuse I've ever heard as to why the status quo is this way for kids sports, I can easily come up with a reasonable workaround that would resolve it, if only the business would adopt the process. Parents need to stop excusing it and giving them a free pass. They take hundreds of dollars from you a term. For most of you, that's more money than your phone plan, more money than public transport, more money than your council rates. Protest and, yes, complain. Provide actual negative feedback. If people don't speak up directly to these businesses, nothing will ever change. It's simply not good enough.

yeah I have this x 2 DC and 2 sports each. Makes weekends a bit stressful but I’m lucky that the teammates’ parents and I can normally work out lift shares to make it happen. Netball is always fixed because they have the courts at x time on x days and turn up to play 3 matches. Rugby is all over the place and can change at v short notice.

I deliberately chose clubs with big squads so I don’t feel bad if we can’t make a few matches.

We get a general idea at certain parts of the season but there are moving goalposts (pardon the pun) in football.
Not all teams enter the same cup competition , some go further in cups than others, teams fold ,games get postponed and need to be replayed.
The league will move fixtures around depending on above to try and get all teams playing each week.
Hence we are never certain until 10 days before.

Youth football does suffer from flaky parents, please don't be one of them.
If you want your son to play, go with the flow.
If you want a rigid timetable look for something else

All the matches will be on Full Time on the league, so whether it’s at home or away is fairly easy to find out. It’s the timing that’s often not confirmed, your team will rely on the other team letting them know a kick off time if they are playing away. That in itself is often a juggling act if they have multiple teams playing on the same pitch so it’s impossible to know weeks in advance. My whole life basically revolves around football. My son plays for a Saturday grassroots team and a Sunday EJA team, and obviously trains twice a week. The team is 45 mins away from where we live as well. My weekends are totally given over to football during the football season.

I agree. We kept every Sunday free for a year last year and found out the times half-termly. Almost every game was right in the middle of the day.

I know everyone in football is volunteering. Like OP I volunteer plenty elsewhere and (quietly) find it annoying!

DS football team still has this and he is now almost in the adult team! Are you friends with the other parents? We often took other boys to matches/ left our son with someone else to fit in other commitments.

now he’s old enough for a few of the team to drive themselves!!

If it's an FA affiliated league the fixtures may well be on the fa full time website. Some managers/coaches prefer to keep this quiet from unknowing parents. Have you tried googling 'XYZ United U7 FA full time fixtures' (with the right details obviously) to see what comes up?

We have the Matchday app too but it is nowhere near as co-ordinated as that!

We have the Matchday app and know fixtures several weeks in advance. It’s something like 8 weeks in advance but then we have to wait for them to re-jig the leagues before the next set of fixtures are released as they might go up or down depending on results. Maybe ask if there’s an app or website you can see the fixtures in advance. I feel for you as my DH works shifts and we have another child who does a different sport so need to sort out lifts etc in advance.

I think things like netball are often played at a central venue which makes timetabling in advance easy. With football hardly anywhere has multiple football pitches available on one site so you have the whole ‘home/away’ issue (though I’d expect teams to know if it’s home or away in advance) and it’s up to
the home team to communicate to the away the time and location of the match. I did used to play in a netball league which did this and my club booked all courts at the start of the season so at least our home games were known in advance, but away games we often only got a week’s notice and you’re right, it is a pain. I was young free and single then, now with a young family I’d find it extremely irritating!!

if I were you OP I’d have boundaries - things like parties I would tell your child they had to accept or decline, and this may mean missing football if they clash. Likewise your husbands work. When declining football as a result, I would say ‘we have now made other plans as we can’t keep the whole day free for a 1 hour game’.

YABU
i help run a youth football team
We get our fixtures from the league 10 days in advance of the match.
As a club we then allocate kick off times for our teams playing at home.
There is never a week when the same teams play at home.
We also have to take other factors into consideration.
Sometimes teams ask for morning/ afternoon kick off due to outside reasons ie parties.
Each club organisers it’s own kick off times due to their own parameters.
There is no way each team can have the same time every week I’m afraid.

I know you weren't blaming anyone for cancellations. I was just remembering the stress trying to contact everyone in time

We have the exact same with my DD's football and its so frustrating. Sometimes it clashes with DS's rugby, sometimes it doesn't. It's my birthday on a Saturday soon and I can't even make proper plans until I know what time the training is. I have asked and was told they had to wait for pitch allocation but surely it isn't that difficult.

I did the admin for my son's team for a while and always tried to get the time and location out as soon as possible. Home games were the easiest as I got the allocation a month in advance but even then I had to wait for confirmation from the opposition team and the referee. Referee allocations were done by the league on a weekly basis on a Monday, it doesn't give you a lot of time really.

Confirmation on Wednesday or Thursday seems the norm.

Last minute cancellations due to flooded or frozen pitches were a nightmare, no whatsapp then so all had to be done by text or email.

We have a Heja app and it says games / times weeks in advance if you look on there. They do change slightly sometimes but not very often.

Usually the other team and home/away are fixed a number of weeks/months in advance. The issue is normally the teams have to fit around other teams who are using the facilties, if they are a club with 4-6 teams and all are playing at home that weekend then they probably have to schedule them over Sat and Sun to fit them all in.

Was just going to say the same thing. If you can do a better job of the scheduling OP, then offer to do it.

Take your son out the team then? If it's a 'chore' for you unlike the 'other families' who treat it as a day out. How stuck up you are

Volunteer to be the fixture secretary then you have all the agro of trying to sort out fixtures in your spare time and all the joy of parents like you moaning about your thankless efforts!!