Simple Subs

The field

Nobody has to keep the minutes in their head

The team stands in its formation and every player carries the time they have been on. The bench carries how long each substitute has been off. From three yards away, in one look, you can see who has had the least.

Yellow arrows are changes you have planned and not made yet. A red OFF means that player is leaving. Nothing happens until you say so.

The question after the game is always some version of "how much did she play?". This is the screen that answers it while there is still time to do something about it.

A close-up of the field: each player's badge with their name, number and the minutes they have been on, a red OFF pill beside three of them, and yellow arrows running up from the bench.

Call the subs

Plan the changes, then read them out

Drag a substitute onto a player to plan a change. Draw three or four while play carries on. Then tap Call Subs and you get the list: who is coming off, who is going on, and the position each one is taking, in words you can say out loud at the touchline.

Make Subs puts all of them on at once, on one whistle, and every clock moves with them.

No shouting six names across a field and hoping. No substitute jogging on and standing in the wrong place because nobody told them which side they were playing.

The Call the Subs panel: a COMING OFF list of three players with their positions, and a GOING ON list reading Delia to left WM taking off Wren.

Tactical planner

A whiteboard, for the two minutes at the side of the field

Magnets on grass. Drag them out of the bin - four colors for your team, three faces for theirs, cones, a ball, numbered markers, and the lines themselves - and move them around while you talk.

A line is a thing you can go back to, not a stroke you have to get right first time. Press and hold one to bend it round a defender, drag either end somewhere else, make it dashed for a pass and solid for a run, or take the arrowhead off. Five colors, so the pass and the press are not the same yellow. Drag out a numbered marker and it comes up 1, then 2, then 3, for a corner that has an order to it.

Copy From Active Match puts the team you already have onto the board, names and all. It opens from Quick Actions without leaving the match, and the board is exactly as you left it when you come back.

Explaining a corner to four nine-year-olds by pointing at an empty field does not work. Pointing at a picture of them does.

The tactical planner: a named blue team on a green field, three opponent faces in the penalty area, a ball, two curved yellow arrows showing runs, a dashed blue line for a pass, and two numbered markers.

At full time

The paperwork is written before you reach the car

The whistle goes and the reports are already there: a play-time report, a minute-by-minute events report, the free substitution form your league collects, and the game lineup card for matches played in quarters. Each one shares as a PDF.

The forms are the real ones, laid out the way they are printed, so the person you hand it to does not have to work out what they are looking at.

The alternative is filling in a paper form from memory in a car park, twenty minutes after the last substitution you can actually remember.

Match time report

Who actually played, and for how long

The whole roster, sorted by name, jersey number or minutes, either direction. Goals and cards sit on the player's own line. Anyone who arrived late, left early, did not attend or did not play is tagged, so a substitute who never got on never looks the same as a child who was not there.

This is the one you send to a parent who asks, and the reason the answer takes ten seconds instead of an argument.

The Match Time Report: full time 10 to 1, then every player with goals, cards, tags such as LEFT EARLY and DID NOT ATTEND, and their playing time.

iPhone and iPad

The same app on whatever you brought

An iPad is the better view and the app is built for one. But a full 11v11 field with fifteen substitutes fits an iPhone, everything is where it is on the big screen, and it works one-handed in portrait.

No account, no sign-in, no waiting for a network on a field with one bar.

The tablet stays in the bag some weeks. The phone is always in your pocket.

The same match screen on an iPhone, in portrait, with the field, the planned substitution arrows and the bench all visible at once.

And the rest of it

The things a real Saturday throws at you

Quarters, not minutes

For the younger divisions where the rule is "everybody gets two quarters", the pill counts quarters and changes land on the break.

Hydration breaks

Stop the clock or keep it running. Every play-time pill, bench timer and report freezes together, so nobody is credited with a water break.

Your own countdown timers

Five minutes until the keeper rotates. It flashes, rings and buzzes when it gets there.

Goals, with who scored them

Tap a goal to credit it, or correct it three quarters later. Scorers wear a ball beside their name.

Cards and playing short

Yellows, reds, second yellows, and a marker holding the empty spot so the app knows you are down to ten.

Formations you can draw

Drag positions where you want them, and change formation mid-match without losing anyone's accumulated time.

Share by QR code

Move a roster, a formation or a tactical board to another device screen to screen. No cloud, no account, nothing uploaded.

Nothing gets lost

A match in progress is saved continuously and comes back exactly as it was, even if the phone restarts in the middle of it.

Fix anything

The score, the clock, who scored, who turned up, who is playing where. Games are messy and the app expects it.