Keep the club FNSW-ready
Your FNSW rating for every programme, the club documents an advisor asks for, and Safe to Play’s child-protection register, kept current all season so an assessment visit holds no surprises.
FNSW assesses every licensed programme against its Club Standards, and the rating decides where the club stands for the licensing cycle. Most of what an advisor looks for is already happening at your club: qualified coaches, fair game time, current Working With Children Checks, a child protection policy. Compliance in the sidebar keeps that evidence as the season runs, so the week before a visit is a review, not a scramble.
- Your technical directors own their programme ratings. Each TD works their own programme's scorecard (see Work your FNSW scorecard). You look after what belongs to the whole club: Safe to Play, the documents and the club-wide essentials. Agree that split with your TDs at the start of the season.
- Appoint your MPIO before you open Safe to Play. It's done on their staff profile; see Get your staff on board.
- Have the club's OCG employer number to hand. You'll need it for the Working With Children checks.
A new club isn't starting from a blank page. Safe to Play opens on the Clubhouse starter child protection policy, the club's planning documents are generated for you, and each programme's scorecard opens when its season starts. Three things are yours to put in place, and nothing is enforced until you do:
- Appoint your MPIO. Until you do, Safe to Play reads No MPIO appointed, and welfare concerns have nobody to go to.
- Enter the OCG employer number under Settings, so each Working with Children Check can be verified.
- Set the Account access cutoff and the Training deadline under Settings, and tell your staff both dates. Before either is set, nobody is locked out for a missing check or course.
Then work the WWC Register from the top: on day one most of your staff will sit under WWC gaps.
Compliance opens with a card for each assessed programme showing its current rating, and a Club and League Compliance card for the obligations that belong to the club rather than one programme. Below them are four links:
- Alerts: "Expiring checks and outstanding actions."
- Document Library: "FNSW Planning documents and evidence."
- Safe to Play: "WWC register, MPIO and child protection policy."
- Senior Roster: "First-grade roster composition, quotas and finals eligibility."
Beside the cards, the Assessment timeline lists every FNSW date for the programmes being assessed, year by year, with a Today line showing where the season is. Each date is tagged with its programme when more than one is assessed, and reads Submitted, Deadline passed or a countdown such as Due in 4 months. The next date is highlighted with a Prepare submission link to that programme's Submission tab. A past date with nothing recorded offers Record hand-over, because a date passing is no proof that anything was sent.
On a phone, a row of buttons at the top switches between each programme and Club-Wide. Under it, Next FNSW deadline shows the next date and what's due; tap it to open the full timeline.
Open a programme's card for its FNSW Rating, with five tabs: Scorecard, Documents, Pathways, Advisor Prep and Submission. The top of the Scorecard shows the rating and how far it is from the top tier: Gold standard met, or a figure such as +71.6% to Gold. Submission is where the evidence pack is handed to FNSW; Work your FNSW scorecard covers it.
Many criteria score themselves from what the club already records: coach qualifications, contracts and PlayFootball IDs, game time, training attendance, FNSW workshop attendance, member surveys. Open one of those and it links to the page with the detail behind it. Game time, for example, checks the FNSW expectation of 50% in the Youth Leagues and an even share in the JDL, using real match minutes.
The rest need a person. Open the criterion and enter the score (the field shows the maximum, such as Score (0–2)), add a note and an evidence link if you have one, then Save score. Clear score undoes a wrong entry. Where an FNSW advisor awards the points at a club visit, the field reads Advisor score and the panel says so: "This criterion is assessed by an FNSW advisor at a club visit." Criteria marked Club-wide essential are set once for the whole club from Club and League Compliance, so they can't be changed from one programme's scorecard.
Priority actions, below the breakdown, lists what would lift the rating most. Open it with your TD each month and give each item an owner.
Pathways is where the refereeing, coaching and administration pathway points come from. Each programme sees the one it's scored on: Game leader development for the JDL, which counts young referees, or Non-playing development for the Youth Leagues, which counts education for players 16 and over. Record accreditation logs a qualification with its dates and certificate; ticking I have sighted the certificate counts it as evidence even without a certificate link.
Advisor Prep is for the weeks before a visit. It separates What would be awarded today, from confirmed scores only, from the Projected rating that includes your own estimates for advisor-assessed items. An estimate is for planning only and never changes the FNSW score.
The Document Library holds the 20 documents FNSW expects a well-run club to have: constitution, plans and policies. Many are already provided by Clubhouse and marked Generated by Clubhouse. When you upload your own, Clubhouse assesses it against the FNSW requirements straight away and tells you what's missing from it. Upload a revision and it's reassessed automatically.
Safe to Play is the club's child-protection record, and the part of an assessment where a gap matters most. It has four tabs: Overview, WWC Register, Training and Settings.
Overview lists the essentials, and each row opens what you need to fix it:
- Child protection policy. Every club starts on the Clubhouse starter policy, shown as Using starter.
View starterto read it, orUpload your own; once yours is up it reads On file. Remove your upload and the club goes back to the starter, so you're never without a policy. - Member Protection Information Officer. Until someone is appointed, the row reads No MPIO appointed. Once appointed, it shows their name and contact details.
- Working with Children register. How many people are current, and how many gaps are left.
- MPIO training. Appears once your MPIO is appointed, and tracks the SIA MPIO e-learning course and the MPIO Part 2 workshop. Enter each completion date and
Save training.
WWC Register is where the season's work is. Everyone who needs a check, staff and team managers alike, sits under WWC gaps or Current holders, from WWC missing and WWC expired through to Current. Holding a number isn't enough on its own: as the employer, the club must verify each one with the NSW Office of the Children's Guardian.
- Open a person, run the check on the OCG employer portal, then
Mark cleared. They show as Verified, and see "Verified by club" on their own profile. - If the OCG reports a bar, select
Record OCG bar. Clubhouse warns you it's "a serious member-protection action". Their access to anything involving children stops straight away, even if their WWC is current, and your MPIO and super admins are alerted. The person is not told through Clubhouse.
Training tracks the two SIA courses, Safeguarding Children and Harassment & Discrimination, for each person. Mark complete as certificates come in.
Settings holds the dates that make all of this stick:
- Account access cutoff: from this date, staff, coaches and team managers without a current WWC can't use their portal. Before it, the section reads In grace period.
- Training deadline:
Set deadlinefor staff and coaches to finish both SIA courses. After it, anyone who hasn't can't use their portal. Team managers aren't affected. - OCG employer registration: your club's OCG employer number.
Set both dates before pre-season and tell your staff what they are. A coach locked out on the first training night is a bad start for everyone. What a locked-out person sees is in How the WWC block works.
Concerns raised about a child go only to your MPIO, and are covered in Safeguard your members.
Alerts gathers everything time-critical in one list, grouped Critical, Warnings and Informational: expiring checks, missing documents and outstanding actions. Aim for it to read No active alerts, and give everything else an owner and a date.
- Every assessed programme shows a rating, and each of its priority actions has an owner.
- Safe to Play shows your own policy on file, an MPIO with training recorded, nobody under WWC gaps, and every check verified.
- The access cutoff and training deadline are set, and your staff know the dates.
- The Document Library has no missing documents, or each one is on the committee's agenda.
- Alerts is empty, or every item in it has an owner.
Last reviewed 30 Sept 2026
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