Every product, every line of code, and every business has a human story. For some, it’s a flash of inspiration in a lab. For others, it’s a response to a global trend.
For me, ClubAssemble began where I suspect most of the best, most practical ideas do—not in a boardroom, but in the middle of a problem I was living with every single week. It started on a wet Tuesday evening, under dim floodlights, with a whistle in my mouth and a smartphone buzzing in my pocket with 15 different, conflicting messages.
The Magic of the Clubhouse
I've been a member and a coach at my local sports club for years. I’m a parent, too. I’ve coached youngsters, watched my own child find confidence and character on the pitch, and I’ve seen lifelong friendships form during mundane training sessions and at bustling club socials.
That’s the magic of grassroots sport. It’s the smell of the grass, the sound of the whistle, the thud of a ball, the chatter in the clubhouse, the smell of chips and hotdogs from the hatch, and the shared, unspoken goal of building a community. It’s a place where kids learn resilience, teamwork, and respect. It’s a place where adults find an escape, a passion, and a second family. This is the "why." This is the part of club life that is priceless.
But behind the scenes of this beautiful, chaotic, human-first community, the day-to-day running of the club told a very, very different story.
It was a story of digital chaos.
Sinking in the "Admin Quicksand"
Organising teams, tracking availability, scheduling matches, booking facilities, and planning social events—all the crucial scaffolding that holds up the community—relied on a fragile, fragmented system of phone calls, scattered messaging groups, endless email chains, conflicting spreadsheets, and an enormous, often unsustainable time investment from club staff and, most critically, volunteers.
I am a coach. I am a parent. But in my professional life, I am a Senior Engineering Manager. I’ve spent my career as a CTO and technical architect, building scalable, secure, and efficient systems for global companies. I live and breathe cloud infrastructure, database design, and user experience.
And this... this was a systems problem. I was living in a state of cognitive dissonance. By day, I was designing serverless architecture to handle millions of transactions. By night, I was trying to figure out who had paid their "subs" by cross-referencing a bank statement with a crumpled piece of paper and a WhatsApp message.
The "magic" of the club was being slowly suffocated by the "admin quicksand." I watched it happening to everyone.
Persona 1: The Overwhelmed Coach (My Story)
Let me paint you a picture of a "simple" task. It’s Wednesday. We have a match on Saturday. I need to know who is available.
7:00 PM: I send a message to the "U12 Parents" WhatsApp group. "Hi all, who is available for the 10:00 AM match vs. Eastview?"
7:01 PM: I get three "Yes" replies. Great.
7:05 PM: I get two "He's got a party, so he'll be late." Does "late" mean 10:15 or 10:45?
7:10 PM: A parent replies with a funny GIF of a cat playing football. This sparks three other GIF replies.
7:15 PM: The "Yes" replies are now buried. I get a "No" for a different player, sent as a private message, not in the group.
7:30 PM: I remember I have a master availability spreadsheet. I open my laptop. I start manually typing 'Yes', 'No', 'Maybe-Late' into the cells.
8:00 PM: I’ve only heard from 10 of the 16 players. I send a "gentle reminder" message to the main group. This annoys the 10 who have already replied.
8:30 PM: The coach from the U13s team messages me. "Heads up, I've borrowed two of your players for my cup game." This is the first I've heard of it. My spreadsheet is now wrong.
9:00 PM: I finally have a "confirmed" team. I've spent two hours on admin that I should have spent planning the training session.
This was one team for one match. The club had 20 teams.
Persona 2: The Confused New Parent
Then there’s the new member. A parent signs their child up, full of enthusiasm. They pay the membership fee. And then... what?
They are added to the WhatsApp group. They instantly see 300 unread messages, none of which make sense. They don't know who the coach is. They can't find the training schedule. They missed the email from three months ago with the link to the "Fixtures Google Sheet," which may or may not be up to date.
They feel disconnected, anxious, and like they're failing before they've even begun. Their first experience with the club isn't the community; it's the confusion.
Persona 3: The Unsung Hero (The Club Secretary)
And what about the club secretary or facilities manager? This volunteer is the glue. They are managing pitch bookings on three different systems:
A Google Calendar for Pitch 1 (which only they can edit).
A shared Excel file for Pitch 2 (which is constantly being overwritten, leading to double-bookings).
A paper diary in the clubhouse for the indoor training nets.
They are the single point of failure. If they go on holiday, the club literally stops. They are drowning in "spreadsheet archaeology"—digging through old files to find out who paid for what in 2022.
I looked at this tangled mess and thought: "There has to be a better way."
This wasn't a problem that needed another, better spreadsheet. This wasn't a problem that needed a new chat app. This was a system-level problem. It needed a Single Source of Truth.
The "A-ha" Moment: Designing the Digital Clubhouse
The idea for ClubAssemble was the answer to that thought. It's not just an app. It's a central, simple place where clubs can build their virtual presence. A digital clubhouse.
My goal became straightforward: reduce the administrative load so clubs can focus on what they do best: running great sport, fostering development, and growing community.
From my first sketches on a notepad, I wasn't just thinking about features. I was thinking about the people I just described. I was thinking about the time, energy, and goodwill we were burning on tasks that a simple, well-designed system could automate.
The entire design and development of ClubAssemble has been guided by three core principles. These aren't just marketing buzzwords; they are the engineering and ethical commitments we make.
Principle 1: Simplicity (The "Five-Minute Rule")
The Problem: Volunteers are the lifeblood of grassroots sport. Their time is the most valuable, non-renewable resource a club has. But "enterprise" software is often built for paid, professional administrators. It's complex, feature-bloated, and requires hours of training.
Our Philosophy: We have a "Five-Minute Rule." If a volunteer coach, a team captain, or a new parent can't figure out how to perform their most common task within five minutes of logging in—without a manual—we have failed.
For the Coach: This means logging in and seeing a dashboard. "Your next event: Sat. 10:00 AM. 11/16 players confirmed." One tap to see who. One tap to send a reminder to only the unconfirmed.
For the Parent: This means opening the app and seeing only what matters to them. "Charlie's training: Thurs. 6:00 PM." "Phoebe's Match: Sat. 10:00 AM." One button to set availability for both.
The Tech Behind It: This principle of simplicity is harder to build than a complex system. It means ruthless prioritisation. It means a clean, declarative UI (one of the reasons we chose a framework like React) that shows state, not process. It means hiding the complexity. The system might be processing 100 database rules in the background, but for the user, it must feel effortless.
Principle 2: Centralization (The "Single Source of Truth")
The Problem: The "digital chaos" I described—the conflicting spreadsheets, the out-of-date Facebook posts, the "which-WhatsApp-group-is-this" confusion—all stem from one root cause: a lack of a Single Source of Truth (SSoT).
Our Philosophy: ClubAssemble is the SSoT.
What this means: When a coach creates a fixture, it's not "their" fixture. They are creating a single "fixture" entry in the club's central database. That single entry is then displayed in multiple places, tailored to the user:
- The Parent sees it on their personal calendar.
- The Coach sees it in their team management view.
- The Club Secretary sees it on the "Club-Wide Schedule."
- The Facilities Manager sees that "Pitch 1" is now booked.
There is no copying. There is no manual entry. There is no "spreadsheet archaeology." If the match time changes, the coach changes it once, and everyone's view is instantly, automatically updated (this is where our choice of a real-time database like Firebase became a non-negotiable).
The Tech Behind It: This is an architectural decision. It’s about building a robust data model from day one. Availability isn't a "chat message"; it's a "boolean" (or tristate: Yes/No/Maybe) value tied directly to a UserID and an EventID. A booking isn't a calendar entry; it's a "document" in a collection that is "owned" by a FacilityID and a TeamID. This structured data is what allows you to escape the chaos.
Principle 3: Inclusive by Design (The "Digital Clubhouse")
The Problem: A club is not one user. It's a complex, multi-faceted community of different user types, all with different needs, permissions, and technical comfort levels. A "one-size-fits-all" app fails everyone.
Our Philosophy: The platform must be a "Digital Clubhouse." It has many rooms, and everyone has the right key for the rooms they need. It must be inclusive by design.
Role-Based Access is Everything: A 14-year-old player, a parent, a coach, and the club's safeguarding officer must not have the same view or capabilities.
Parental Controls: This is paramount. A parent must be able to "link" to their child's account. They can manage their child's availability, see their schedule, and communicate with the coach—all without giving the child access to features they don't need.
Coaches & Volunteers: They get the "power tools" for their specific team(s) but can't see the finances.
Club Admins: They get the 30,000-foot view. They can see facility utilisation, manage all members, and send club-wide announcements.
Accessibility: This means more than just features. It means layouts that are clear and uncluttered for members who may not be tech-savvy. It means clear permissions so everyone knows who can see what.
The Tech Behind It: This is where my engineering background became most critical. This is all about secure authentication and a robust permissions model. We use secure, token-based auth (like Firebase Authentication) combined with custom rules and claims. A user's "role" (e.g., role: 'coach', team: 'U12s') is baked into their identity token. Our database rules then say, "Only a user with a 'coach' role for 'U12s' can edit documents in the 'U12s' team collection." This provides granular, secure, and scalable control. It makes the platform safe and appropriate for all members, from age 8 to 80.
The Journey Ahead
This is the "why." This is the problem we set out to solve. ClubAssemble is a project built from lived experience—from coaching sideline frustrations, late-night admin marathons, and a genuine desire to make life easier for the volunteers who keep grassroots sports alive.
Over the coming weeks and months, I'll be writing more in this diary. This is just Chapter 1. The next posts will be the "how."
I'll dive deep into the technical choices we made—the specific "why" behind our serverless architecture, why we chose React for the front-end, and how we leverage Google Cloud and Firebase for real-time data and scalability.
I'll share the journey of building our key features—from the first wireframes of the availability tracker to the complexities of the facility booking system.
I'll talk about the "little wins" (the first time a coach set their team in 30 seconds) and the "bugs" (the time an update accidentally sent 50 notifications to everyone).
Most importantly, I'll share the feedback from the clubs who are piloting ClubAssemble, and how their real-world input is shaping the future of the platform.
If you’re involved in grassroots sport—as a player, parent, coach, or administrator—I hope this story sounds familiar. If it does, I hope ClubAssemble can help you spend less time on paperwork and more time on the pitch.
Because the magic should be in the community, not in the admin.
— M. Lightfoot, founder of ClubAssemble