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CLUB MANAGEMENT
Are you a Club, School, League or another Organisation or Association?
We'd love to show you how Rookie Me Play can improve the experience of your team's staff, volunteers and other personnel, by reducing their work load and stress – as well as providing you with better oversight and monitoring of your teams.
Talk to salesKey solutions for club administrators
Save Time
Reduce parental angst
Club oversight of all data
Implement policy
Keep kids in the game
The West Australian Football Commission and Rookie Me have partnered to provide Rookie Me Play to 1500 junior teams in WA.
As part of Junior Football Rules, each player must receive 50% game time to ensure fair participation for all and encourage longer careers.
Rookie Me Play allows clubs, leagues and teams to manage game time, enabling oversight for administrators and coaching coordinators.
Troy Kirkham, Executive Manager Game Development and Community Football at the West Australian Football Commission, has endorsed the initiative.
“Providing all kids with an opportunity to participate and play the game is critical to their long-term retention in football,” Kirkham said.
“The ability for clubs to monitor game time of their players ensuring that they reach a minimum percentage of time on the field is a great way to ensure their long-term involvement in the game.
“Rookie Me Play provides a simple to use program to monitor game time, and the WAFC is pleased to partner with Rookie Me to roll this out across metro junior competitions”.
“The partnership provides all junior clubs with the Interchanger program to promote fair game time among the junior clubs to make sure every player gets 50% game time,” Kirkham said.“The partnership provides all junior clubs with the Interchanger program to promote fair game time among the junior clubs to make sure every player gets 50% game time,” Kirkham said.
Trusted by over 4000+ teams
“The NWFL uses Rookie Me Play to assist our volunteers in implementing our league policy of every player receiving fair game time (50%). The app provides users with an easy-to-use interface (on iPhone or iPad) to monitor playing times, accompanied by alerts to guide volunteers. Our clubs are able to have a lens on their teams and the league too can assist with monitoring and compliance. Parental angst and conflict has been reduced because everything is transparent. Club and league managers do not waste time resolving disputes over game time. If your league or club is serious about giving all children a fair go then Rookie Me Play is the perfect tool.”
“The SWJFL have been using Rookie Me's solutions to assist our clubs with the management of game time for several seasons. The ability of the league and our clubs to have oversight of game time has significantly reduced those difficult conversations between presidents, coaching coordinators, coaches and parents.”
“We used this app last year for our Under 12 team. The inclusion of the ability to delegate roles like stats and time keeping to other parents has made game day a lot more enjoyable and easier for our volunteers.”
“A fantastic piece of technology that assists in modernising community football, in allowing coaches to streamline equal playing time amongst their junior teams.”
“Can track everyone’s game time and positions. Helps keep the parents in check when they come to me about game time. Use what stats you want or don’t want. Pretty simple to use.”
Disputes
Reduce Parental Angst
Disputes over game time can be challenging for coaches, coordinators and other volunteers in junior clubs.
Playing time metrics for children is often unclear, leading to frustration among parents/guardians, coaches, administrators and the players themselves. Unfairness is often perceived and sometimes real.
Rookie Me Hub facilitates transparency and accountability by providing clear insights into how much time each child spends playing, as well as integrity scores and fair game time scores to ensure clubs and leagues have an effective means to enforce rules or reward compliance, and ultimately reducing dropouts from the game.
Volunteer engagement
Save volunteer time
Valuable volunteer time is often wasted handling game time disputes. Using outdated pen-and-paper methods leads to inefficient communication and double handling of tasks.
Rookie Me Hub is the centralised platform for Rookie Me Play that provides a single, reliable source of game-day and season information, enabling informed decision making and productive conversations based on real data.
Ensure everyone's on the same page and save time for what truly matters: the game itself
Compliance
Implementing policy
Managing, monitoring, and implementing policy across teams, clubs, and leagues can be a logistical nightmare.
Rookie Me Hub offers comprehensive data tracking for all games, connecting teams to their respective clubs and leagues to make it easy.
By recording data for each game and aggregating it across the entire season, administrators gain valuable insights and reports to aid in policy implementation and compliance. With customisable thresholds, club and league administrators can easily identify areas needing improvement and ensure adherence to set standards.
Player engagement
Improve player retention
Leagues and clubs invest heavily in recruiting new players, yet often drop the ball retaining existing participants. When players are stuck on the bench, or restricted to specific positions, it can lead to players losing interest and dropping out of the game due to not having fun or feeling like they’re not good enough.
Rookie Me Hub provides position playing time measurements across a season to track player equity – ensuring fair opportunities for all players.
Promoting an inclusive environment which emphasises participation over winning, ultimately keeps more children engaged in the game.
Coach engagement
Improve Coach Retention
Keeping good coaches around can be challenging. Coach burnout is real. Coaches often don't have the time, resources and support to gather useful data, leaving them to make player and team decisions based on memory and guesswork.
Rookie Me Play lightens the load by enabling game-day data collection to be delegated and collected into a single centralised platform, Rookie Me Hub – freeing up coaches to focus on what they do best: coaching.
Clubs and leagues can support coaches' growth, and demonstrate their commitment to coach development, providing them tools and access to real-time data and player management, allowing for comprehensive post-match and season analysis.
Fair game time
AFL Rules
Rookie Me Play and Rookie Me Hub have been built to assist with the implementation of the new AFL Junior Policy - Play your way, junior football rules states that "all players MUST receive a minimum of 50-75% game time" [reference].
These rules for junior football also state that “rotation of players should occur at least every quarter to provide opportunities in several positions including the interchange”.
Clubs and leagues also have rules and/or by-laws enshrining policy on minimum game time but they have no mechanisms for implementation.
Managing, monitoring and implementing these rules at team, club and league levels can be logistically difficult.
Rookie Me Play and Rookie Me Hub are here to help.
The Science
Backed by research
Research Point 1
Lack of game time for a player is a Top 5 contributing factor for disengagement with Australian rules football.¹ The primary reason for participation in alternative sports was based on the opportunity for more game time, more touches during the games and greater scoring opportunities.¹
Research Point 2
It is well established that playing multiple sports from a young age leads to a wider skill set, by extension the rotation of players through multiple positions on the field will likely result in a more well-rounded footballer²,³.
Research Point 3
Stint duration of an individual athlete results in an exponential decay in running intensities i.e., the longer a player is on the field, the greater the decrease in their running output⁴. There is also a strong correlation with overuse injuries and training exposure / volume of exercise, highlighting the need to properly manage an athlete’s playing and training time⁵,⁶.
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View research references
- Agnew, D., Pill, S., & Drummond, M. (2016). Investigating the elements that encourage or inhibit the participation of children and youth in Australian Football. Annals of Leisure Research, 19(1), 27-46.
- Wiersma, L. D. (2000). Risks and benefits of youth sport specialization: Perspectives and recommendations. Pediatric exercise science, 12(1), 13-22.
- LaPrade, R. F., Agel, J., Baker, J., Brenner, J. S., Cordasco, F. A., Côté, J., ... & Provencher, M. T. (2016). AOSSM early sport specialization consensus statement. Orthopaedic journal of sports medicine, 4(4), 2325967116644241.
- Dillon, P. A., Kempton, T., Ryan, S., Hocking, J., & Coutts, A. J. (2018). Interchange rotation factors and player characteristics influence physical and technical performance in professional Australian Rules football. Journal of science and medicine in sport, 21(3), 317-321.
- Ek, A., Kowalski, J., & Jacobsson, J. (2022). Training in spikes and number of training hours correlate to injury incidence in youth athletics (track and field): a prospective 52-week study. Journal of science and medicine in sport, 25(2), 122-128.
- Martínez-Silván, D., Díaz-Ocejo, J., & Murray, A. (2017). Predictive indicators of overuse injuries in adolescent endurance athletes. International journal of sports physiology and performance, 12(s2), S2-153.
Complimentary software
Introducing Hub
Rookie Me Hub is our web-based accompaniment to Rookie Me Play, enabling club and league administrators oversight and management of all team data.
Leagues and clubs are only a few clicks away from comprehensive reports for all of their teams.
Rookie Me Hub is currently in an early release phase and is undergoing continuous development.
Reports
All users of Rookie Me Play have access to its web-based companion - Rookie Me Hub. Here you will find a range of reports suitable for teams ranging from under 8s through to pro and semi-pro teams
Kickstart your season with Play
Available on iPhone and iPad.
Cloud-based with offline support.
Intuitive and guided player alerts.
Monitor injury and assessment time.
Track disciplinary and opposition time.
Share the load with game role delegations.
Track over 50 stats for your team and players.
Manage player fatigue and minimum game time.
Track over 100+ players and team stats.
Manage game clock with time-on capabilities.
Private and collaborative note-taking.
Plan mode with queued rotations.
Manageable from Field and List view.
Manage fatigue and minimum game time.
Manage the game clock, with time-on capabilities.