Game Day Planning

Games: creating and switching

Each game is saved on its own. The bar at the top of the Game-day tab shows the game you're on and its shape, for example 6 shifts · 3-1-2 · 8 min/shift, plus a status: Not started · Planning, Live, or Final with the score.

• Tap + New game to set the date, opponent, half length and minutes per shift. The form shows how many shifts that makes. Tap Start Game to create it. This saves the game for planning. It doesn't start the clock.
• Tap the game's name to switch to another saved game, newest first.
• Tap ··· next to the name to Rename, Duplicate or Delete the game. Duplicate copies the plan (lineup, absences, pins and shift locks) into a new game, which is handy for a tournament day.
• Tap Lock plan to make the whole game read-only. A banner confirms it's locked. Tap Unlock to edit again. A locked game also gets an Export button that shares the lineup as text, or copies it.

Tip: Lock a game after it's over so nobody edits its history by accident.

How many shifts

The number of shifts comes from the game's half length and minutes per shift:

Shifts per half = half length ÷ minutes per shift, rounded down

Example: 24-minute halves with 8-minute shifts = 3 shifts per half, 6 in the game

Any minutes left over (2 minutes from a 26-minute half with 8-minute shifts, for example) show as a note. Use them for a final quick burst, or ignore them.

Marking players absent

The Mark Absent panel has a chip for each player. Tap a chip to mark that player out for this game. Absent players stay out of Auto-Assign and the plan. Tap again to bring them back.

You can also mark who's here on the kickoff screen when you start the game. See Running a Live Game.

Warning: Mark absences before running Auto-Assign. If you mark someone absent afterwards, run Auto-Assign again or fix the affected shifts by hand.

Building a shift on the chalkboard

Under the action buttons is the chalkboard for one shift at a time. Use the ◀ ▶ arrows to step through Shift 1 of 6, Shift 2 of 6 and so on.

• Open spots in your formation show as +. Tap one to pick a player.
• The picker lists bench players with the fewest planned shifts at the top, and the best fit for that position first. The top player is tagged Next due. Each row shows which shifts they're already planned for, like planned: S1, S3. Search by name or number, or filter by position.
• Tap a player already on the field to swap them with someone else.
• Or drag a player onto another position to swap the two.
• The 3 of 7 set line shows how much of the shift is filled. Players not yet placed are listed under the board.
• Tap Auto-fill open spots to fill whatever's left in this shift. Your own placements stay put.

Tip: You don't have to fill every shift before the game. When you kick off, SquadRotate fills any open spots in the plan with the players who are there.

Running Auto-Assign

Tap Auto-Assign All to fill every shift at once. It:

• Spreads playing time so the kids who've played least go on first
• Rotates the goalkeeper among players with GK ticked, fewest turns in goal first
• Moves each player around the positions they've ticked, so nobody gets stuck in one spot
• With Fair balance on in Team settings, never benches anyone two shifts in a row

Tap Clear to empty the shifts and start again. Locked shifts are skipped by both.

See Under the Hood for exactly how it decides.

The fairness pill

Next to the shift arrows, a small pill sums up the whole plan. It reads balanced when playing time is even, or calls out the biggest gap, like Sam benched 3x or Ava plays 2, Leo plays 4. Tap the pill to show or hide the Position Rotation Matrix.

The shift cards

Below the chalkboard, every shift has its own card with each player's position in a dropdown (GK, DEF, MID, STR or Bench), a small chalkboard, and a role count.

• Change a dropdown and SquadRotate suggests a swap: a short list of players you could trade with to keep the shift right. Tap one to swap both players, or tap Keep Change.
• A green outline means the shift matches your formation. A red outline comes with a message saying exactly what to fix, such as too many goalkeepers or a missing defender.
• Between cards, a banner shows the changes from the shift before: Off, On and Move (for example, Taylor DEF→MID).
• Each card header shows the shift's strength with a dot: green Strong, yellow OK or red Weak. See Under the Hood.

Shift locking: mid-game changes

Each shift card has its own Lock button. Lock a shift to keep it exactly as it is while you change later ones. Auto-Assign and Clear skip locked shifts. This helps with:

• Late arrivals: lock the shifts already played, bring the player back from absent, and run Auto-Assign for the rest.
• Injuries: lock the shifts already played, mark the player absent, and run Auto-Assign. A player who played an earlier locked shift and is then marked absent shows as Injured in later shifts.

Locked shifts have an amber border. Shift locks belong to the game you set them in. A new game starts with nothing locked, and switching back to an earlier game shows its locks as you left them. If you shorten a game after locking shifts, a lock on a shift that no longer exists is dropped.

Note: To fix a locked shift, tap its Lock button to unlock it, make your changes, then lock it again. Pins stay when you Clear, so a goalkeeper pin still applies the next time you run Auto-Assign.

Pinning a player to a position

Each player row on a shift card has a pin button. A pin tells Auto-Assign to leave that player in that position instead of rotating them.

• Tap the pin to hold the player there for that shift only.
• Press and hold the pin (or right-click on a computer) to choose: this shift, or all shifts.
• A pin on every shift shows with a ring around it, so you can tell the two apart.

This is how you give the same keeper two shifts in goal and let Auto-Assign rotate everyone else. Pin them in shifts 1 and 2 and run Auto-Assign. Those two shifts still count toward fairness, so the other keepers take the rest of the game.

Changing a player's position by hand, or swapping them on the chalkboard, clears their pin for that shift. Pins on other shifts stay. Pinning to all shifts skips locked shifts.

Print sheets

Tap Print sheets to save one image per shift, ready to print and post on the bench. Each sheet shows the field with every player in their spot, the formation, the roster, and a bench box saying who goes on next, where, and who they replace.

Players print as first name and last initial. If two players share that short name, both get a star wherever they appear, with a footnote at the bottom of the sheet naming them.

Tip: Each position has its own color on the sheet, so a color printer works best.

On a tablet or laptop

On a wider screen, Game-day shows the shift's roster list and the chalkboard side by side. The shift arrows move both together.

Starting the game

When the plan is ready, tap Start Game on the game bar. That opens the kickoff screen. See Running a Live Game.

At least one shift needs players in it first. If the plan is empty, SquadRotate asks you to run Auto-Assign.