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

[JadziaD]

DS joined a football team last season. He played a few matches but it was a bit ad hoc and I assumed its as because we were new. Now he's a fully committed member of the team.

But while matches are every Saturday, we do not get info on where or when until the week before. Sometimes even as late as Wednesday or Thursday. So we have to keep the ENTIRE Saturday open as we don't know if we're playing at home at 9am or away (up to 45 minutes travel) at 12:30.

Is it just our division/league? Or all teams? And am I the only one who finds it so annoying? We do other sports and activities and this simply isn't the case with any of them. Either we know in advance and/or for short notice activities, there's a total understanding that if you can't make it, so be it.

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’.

Yes, I think I have bought into this whole thing of 'we have to prioritise football as he's on the team" or whatever and constantly feeling this pressure that we can't let the team down. You're totally right - if things don't work out sometimes, then so be it.

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.

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

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?

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!!

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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