In 1998, on the touch lines at a Divisional trial, we met with Ron Tennick, the Schools and Youth Manager at the England Rugby Football Schools Union (ERFSU) at Castlecroft and acquired the full support of the ERFSU to design and build The Schools' Rugby Website (see SchoolsRugby.co.uk). In the years that followed SchoolsRugby.co.uk became known by many as the "Home of Schools Rugby". We also developed products for the ERFSU such as GameOn! (a CD circulated to 3,300 ERFSU member schools) and COACH LOGIN, all of which have been superseded by FixturesPRO.

In 2001, building on the success of SchoolsRugby.co.uk, we began the design of SchoolsSports.com and much broader sports coverage. In the years following we introduced sport websites for football, hockey, netball and cricket using schools rugby as the tried and tested model.

As members of Youth Sport Trust’s Business Honours Club, we met with Guin Batten, Roger Davies and Sue Barrett, senior executives of the Youth Sport Trust in 2006 to discuss our objectives and seek guidance in producing a quality online toolkit to assist the whole schools sports sector in achieving its goals. We were advised to undertake suitable research with potential users in the field, produce a prototype, test it and report back. This we duly did with the help of a panel of Heads of Sports, Competition Managers, Partnership Development Managers, SSCos, PLTs as well as NGB and CSP staff.

We piloted FixturesPRO initially with 34 schools from February to July 2008 and evolved our ideas to cater for SSPs. The feedback was positive. The feedback questionnaire asked whether the users Strongly Agreed, or Agreed or Disagreed or Strongly Disagreed with various questions to ascertain if the toolkit was of benefit. 100% replied and stated they either Strongly Agreed or Agreed that the toolkit was of benefit and that they wished to use it further. Chris Milward, Senior Competition Manager, said, “..we found the toolkit so useful that we have decided to use it as our main source of communication within the pilot SSP, and all other 10 SSPs in our Region. We would have no hesitation in recommending it..”.

Rob Hewlitt, PDM said, “Without doubt the SSP Website and FixturesPRO has made my life easier, saved me time, and given me better and quicker information”.

We have also shown FixturesPRO and the SSP Website to Sue Campbell, Chair, and Steve Grainger, Chief Executive Officer of Youth Sport Trust, who understandably need to remain impartial. This said, it would be safe to say that all Heads of Sports and Youth Sport Trust staff who have seen FixturesPRO have been very complimentary.

During 2010 we further developed FixturesPRO to cater for more than 60 sports and introduced a sports website capability for schools as part of the package. This was formally launched in September 2010 and in the first three months more than 18,000 teams were uploaded by member schools.

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