Set up your Season Plan

A season has a shape before it has fixtures: pre-season, the blocks you coach in, the breaks, finals, and the handful of dates families plan their year around. Season Plan is where you write that shape down once. The club calendar, what families see, and the review windows in every player's plan all read from it, so it's worth an hour before anything else.

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Planning a programme's season for the first time? A new season has no plan at all until you choose how to start one. Work through it in this order.

1. Check the season has a start date. Every phase is counted from it. If the page reads "The 2027 season has no start date", your club administrator sets it, and nothing else here can happen until they do.
2. Pick a template, or start from scratch, under Start from a template. A programme with no previous season gets Start from scratch instead of a copy.
3. Shape the phases to your real pre-season and blocks, under Shape your phases.
4. Add the key dates families plan around, parent-meeting windows first, under Add your key dates.
5. Check the curriculum is published before pre-season, in Shape your development curriculum.

Then move on to Build your squads.

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• Season Plan is in the Season group of your programme sidebar. You can edit your own programme's plan from day one. Coaches see it read-only under Season plan in their portal.
• Know the rough shape: when pre-season starts, when round 1 falls, any mid-season break, and roughly when you want to meet families. Dates can move later. The structure is what to get right first.
• Use the Season dropdown at the top to switch years, so you can build next season while this one is still running.

An empty season offers three ways in:

• Pre-season + 4 blocks: the standard youth shape, a 10-week pre-season then four 10-week blocks.
• Pre-season + 3 blocks: for a compressed season.
• Copy last season. The tile names the year, for example Copy 2026, and brings across last season's phases re-anchored to this season's dates. If there's nothing to copy, this tile is Start from scratch instead.

Each template also adds suggested key dates, such as trials, grading, season launch, the two rounds of parent meetings, a mid-season break and finals. They start visible to families, so read through them and move or remove anything that doesn't fit your club before the season is under way.

Select Add phase (1). On a computer you can also hover between two phases on the timeline to add one in that exact spot. Each phase has a name, a Type and dates:

Dates snap to whole weeks, counted from the season's start date: if the season starts on a Sunday, every phase does too. A break or finals phase only labels that stretch of the season; player plan cycles run in blocks, so if you want a review in a period, it needs to be a block. A block shorter than four weeks is too short for a plan cycle, and Clubhouse tells you so as you set the dates. A week with nothing planned shows Label gap, so you can name it without redrawing the season.

Pre-season and in-season blocks take an optional Focus, such as Playing out from the back under pressure. It shows against the phase for your coaches, and on the family calendar as the note on that block.

Select Add milestone (2) for the dates around the football. What is it? offers Parent meetings, Trials, Grading, Registration, Season launch, Custom or Coach development (staff only), which is covered below.

1. Set When, from and to. It's in weeks on purpose: families see "week of", so the exact day can settle later. A date can fall before pre-season starts, which suits trials and registration.
2. Add Notes if families need more, such as where trials are held. They show when someone opens the date in their calendar.
3. Under Who sees it, choose Parents, Players or both. Staff always see it.
4. For Parent meetings, choose the Meeting round: Initial plan for the start-of-season plan meeting, or Block review for a mid-season review.

When you later set up the bookable meetings for that round from IDPs, the milestone shows its progress (Round drafted, Bookings open, then ✓ Held), and families see the real meetings in place of the planned week.

Your coaches have three development conversations with you each season, and the Season Plan is where their dates live. Choose Coach development (staff only), then which conversation the dates are for: Pre-season plan, Mid-season review or End-of-season review. Each one is dated once a season, so once all three are set the choice reads Coach development (all three dated).

These rows are staff only. Coaches see them in their calendar, and families never do. On the strip they're teal diamonds beside the amber key dates, with a key underneath, so a coach review that shares its week with parent meetings doesn't hide behind it.

The templates add all three for you: coach pre-season plans the fortnight before the family meetings, so each coach's plan is agreed before they sit down with families, mid-season reviews in the same weeks as the block-review meetings, and end-of-season reviews across finals. If you remove a coach row, that conversation borrows your parent-meeting or finals dates instead, and Coaches says which dates it's using.

A campaign that runs to its own dates, such as a championship your senior side enters, has a Season Plan of its own but no coach development dates. What is it? doesn't offer them there, and its templates leave them out, because each coach has one plan for the year and its dates live on the league programme's Season Plan. See Run two competitions in one programme.

The plan reaches families through their Clubhouse calendar, and through their phone calendar if they've synced it:

• Each block appears on its first day, for example Competitive block 1 begins, with its focus as the note.
• Every key date you've made visible to parents or players appears across its week, with your notes.
• A parent-meeting window gives way to the real meetings once you've set them up, so nobody sees the same meeting twice.

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The family side is in Your season in the app, and booking a meeting is in Book a player review.

• The timeline runs end to end with no weeks you can't explain, and the summary line under it reads the way you'd describe your season.
• Every key date has the right Who sees it. If phases are set but there are no key dates, the plan says No key dates yet, because families have almost nothing to see.
• The club Calendar shows your blocks and key dates on the right weeks.

Next: Build your squads. Once the blocks are set, Roll out player development plans builds its reviews around them.