Football management vignettes #2

Now that I have introduced you to the concept of the FA website, I can delve deeper into the arcana of attempting to administer a team via one of the tentacular arms of the website. This is an arm that, unsurprisingly, bears almost no apparent similarity to any other arm of the FA, and is called the Whole Game System. Because nobody would want a Half Game System, or even a Two-Halves Game System.

I'm fairly certain that you have to have performed a ritual sacrifice under a full moon while chanting ancient Sanskrit incantations to be allowed to actual register players with the Whole Game System. Which is perhaps why it is that the Club Official who is allowed to do so for our club is, well, venerable. 

It also appears to be exactly the same system that is used for every level of English football. For instance, my own entry lists, in order of importance, my name, date of birth, and number of international caps.

Among the vagaries of the Whole Game System is the fact that once a player's name has been entered, it is cast in stone for all time. It is not possible for any changes to be made by our venerable Club Official. Instead, he must submit a request to the County Official, who may then have to escalate the issue to FA HQ at St Georges Park. Because I can't imagine them having anything better to do at the moment. And it's clearly unheard of for anyone to ever change their name. It's almost as the though the FA aren't aware of the concept of marriage, or the tradition many women still follow.

The immutable nature of names makes it all the more frustrating that venerable Club Official is not the most accurate typist. LittleBear, for example, has spent three years with a letter missing from his surname. Various other boys in my team have their names entered with no capital letters, or entirely in capitals, or in one notable case, changing from lower case to upper case half way through the forename, just after the letter "a". Anyone who's ever slipped onto the Caps Lock key knows what we're talking about here.

It took two days this week to have a letter added to LittleBear's name, but I have finally managed it.

And then I hit a more significant hurdle. One of my boys has changed his surname. He no longer wants to have his (estranged) father's name, he wants to use his mother's name. Utterly fair and reasonable, and relatively painless in other areas of his life. But with the FA?

The emails went something like this:

Me to Club Officer: My player has changed his name, what do I do?

Club Officer to County FA: Our player has changed his name. Shall we create a new player in the system?

County FA: NO! Never create a new player if it's someone who's played before! Send me the player details.

Club Officer: It's OK, I haven't created a new player, I was just asking. I don't know his details anyway.

Me: Here are his details.

Club Officer: Shall we create a new player now?

County FA: NO! NO! NO! How many times have I told you, never create a new player if it's someone who's played before!

Club Officer: Why are you panicking? I haven't done anything.

County FA: I've changed the name.

Club Officer: I can't find the new name in the system. Shall I create a new player?

At this point, I'm fairly certain I heard County FA's intestines climbing up his throat in an attempt to choke off the blood supply to his own brain. He certainly hasn't shown any signs of life via email. I don't really blame him.

I looked on the Whole Game System for my player. We now have two copies of him, both with the same, new, correct name. 

Football management vignettes #1

I have been very quiet here lately. Very, very quiet. And this is partly because I feel as though I have nothing interesting to say* and partly because the only interesting things have been both enormously stressful and involving other people who don't deserve to be written about, even on a pseudonymous blog. 

 Oh, and I'm busy.

 Busy? Even while a pandemic continues to rage?

Oh yes. Busy.

Because it is the end of the football season, and the start of preparing for the next football season. A season that only starts on 11th September, but one for which we must start organising now.

So I am going to attempt to get back into the swing of writing by giving you some vignettes into the life of volunteering at a grassroots club. 

And we'll start with the FA website.

The FA website. When you phrase it like that, it sounds as though there might only be one website. And there is. Sort of. I certainly only have one username and password. But an injudicious click of a link and I find myself somewhere that bears almost no resemblance to where I came from. I have (so far) identified at least five different websites that all pretend to be part of the FA. Each has clearly been written by different people. Each has different designs, colour schemes and menu layouts. Why should this bother me? Well... I have, for reasons that are probably good, volunteered to become a Welfare Officer for LittleBear's club. This has involved additional training. Online courses, webinars and questionnaires. All of which is accessed through MyLearning. Not, it is important to note, through MyAccount. Though MyAccount does have a subsection titled My Learning, this is categorically not the same as MyLearning. Spaces matter don't you know?

Having completed all required modules, and acquired nice green ticks next to each one, my training was marked as 83% complete. There was no means of determining what the remaining 17% was, or where to find it. I tried asking my County Safeguarding Officer. She asked me to send her my completion certificate. I explained I couldn't because of the aforementioned missing 17% and thus absence of certificate. She asked for the completion certificate. I explained (with screenshots) why I couldn't send it to her. She asked me for the completion certificate. There were brick walls that were more rewarding to bang my head against.

I asked the FA, via a bizarrely complex web form, in which in the "other comments" section I resorted to begging for help. "I just want to be a Welfare Officer! Please help me!" Then, magically, for reasons that have never been clear, my course was marked 100% complete and I was the proud owner of a certificate. And then the FA emailed me to say, "we've looked into it, and your course is complete. What's the problem?" Sigh...

So now I was qualified. Right? Wrong. MyLearning showed that I had completed the course. But My Learning, over on MyAccount, did not know this. My Learning did not think I had completed any of the course. Do pay attention to the typography here. Spaces matter. Remember how the County Safeguarding Officer wanted my completion certificate? Remember that? Well, it turns out, she needed me to send her the certificate that the FA website issued to me, so that she could upload a copy of it to the FA website, to be attached to My Learning record on MyAccount, so I could then be registered as a Welfare Officer. Yes, really.

So here I am, as a Welfare Officer, and it has been my great joy** to discover that there are several more sections of the FA website that I now have privileged access to. Guess what? They look nothing like the rest of the site.

* I could, of course, write reams, almost every day, in which I rant about the government, but I'm mostly sure that most of you are as tired of the shit-show as I am, and being permanently angry is exhausting.

 ** It really hasn't.