Guides by role
Technical directors
Run a programme end to end — recruitment, season plan, squads, training, IDPs and match weeks.
1
Getting started
Find your feet in the portal before the season work begins.
2
Recruit
Fill next season’s squads with new names, and line up the senior deals.
Recruit players for your programmeKeep every player you’re chasing on one board, move each card as the conversation goes, and get a colleague’s second opinion before the club makes its call.Answer your recruitment enquiriesWork through the families who filled in the club’s expression-of-interest form, put the promising players on your board, and rescue the forms spam protection turned away.Find players you haven’t heard ofSearch every player in the system, read the Standouts leaderboards for scorers and players playing up, and bring former players back from other clubs.Send a recruitment offerOffer a new player a place in next season’s squad, with the deposit, the deadline and an optional amateur agreement, then nudge, resend or change it while the family decides.
3
First Grade contracts
The senior roster, the money behind it, and the paperwork that closes each deal.
Run your First Grade rosterBuild a squad that meets the Player Roster Principles, fits the budget the board approved, and holds up from lodgement to the last round.Set the budget and play out scenariosMeasure the wage bill against a cap, price the season under different records, keep staff wages beside the players’, and know exactly which weeks you’re paying for.Write a senior dealDraft a contract the way the club actually negotiates, from scratch, from a teammate’s terms or from a signed paper copy, with every payment priced against the competition it belongs to.Send the deal and get it signedTurn a draft into an offer the player signs on their phone, or record a deal already signed on paper, and let the signature do the squad admin for you.Change or end a senior dealRe-sign a player by carrying their deal forward, end a contract with any pay after it settled, and keep the squad’s history accurate when players leave or come back.Plan the squad on the whiteboardSketch next season, or the mid-season window, on boards that price and compliance-check themselves while you move players around.
4
Plan the season
Lay out the phases, key dates and development language everything else reads from.
Set up your Season PlanLay out the phases your season runs in and the key dates around them once, and let the club calendar, families and player plans read from it all year.Shape your development curriculumYour club’s football philosophy lives in two places: Key Documents, where it’s written down, and each programme’s Curriculum, whose goals go straight into players’ plans.
5
Build your squads
Stand up age groups, rosters and coaching staff.
6
Run the season
Training on its weekly pattern, plans in front of players, and the match-week rhythm.
Set up training for the seasonPut every squad on its weekly training pattern, change a single session when the weather or the ground says so, and watch availability and session plans as the season runs.Roll out player development plansPut a development plan in front of every player in your programme. Players reflect first, coaches make their call and choose the focus, your curriculum supplies the goals, you approve, and families respond.Run your match weeksA Mixed JDL weekend asks for your review before families are told on Friday. Every other programme asks you to oversee its coaches, and to approve the message whenever a fixture changes.Run two competitions in one programmeWhen your senior side enters the Australian Championship, the campaign sits inside the programme you already run. The sidebar follows the competition being played, and one dropdown on Squads compares the rosters.
7
Re-sign for next season
Decide who the club keeps, tell every family with care, and watch next season’s squads take shape.
Run your retention roundHear from your coaches, make the club’s call on every player, and lock in each squad’s decisions before anyone hears a word.Tell families your retention decisionsCall the families you’re not keeping before anyone reads it in an email, then send the squad’s offers and releases in one deliberate step.Follow up retention offersRecord a deposit paid at the club, give a family more time, fix an offer for the wrong squad, and reopen one that expired.
8
Your staff and standards
Develop the coaches everything else depends on, and keep the FNSW points arriving.
Manage and develop your coaching staffEverything you plan reaches players through a coach. Bring coaches on properly, keep their qualifications current, give each one a development plan, and write down what you see at training and on match day.Carry your coaching staff into next seasonAppoint the coaches you’re keeping to next season’s squads, move them to a different age group where they’re stepping up, and end the seats of the ones you’re letting go.Run coach development plans across the seasonThree conversations with every coach: a pre-season plan, a mid-season review and an end-of-season review. Start them from Coaches, complete each one with the coach, and let Clubhouse send the reminders.Work your FNSW scorecardFNSW rates each youth and JDL programme against its club standards. The scorecard shows where the points are, Submission shows what each FNSW hand-over still needs, and game time is earned every weekend.Write your club’s football identityWrite the club’s mission, values and technical framework once, in your own words. Clubhouse builds the FNSW documents every programme is graded on from them, and keeps the club’s evidence in them current.Write your programme’s methodologyWrite the principles of play, the four corners, the stages and how your coaches build a session, for the club and for any programme that coaches differently. Clubhouse drafts in those words.
More technical directors guides are on the way — this journey grows as we document every workflow through the season. Can’t find what you need? Search with ⌘K or ask in the app’s Help panel.