Moving your team off WhatsApp: a practical plan

WhatsApp is free, instant and already on everyone's phone, so it's where most grassroots teams start. It's great for a quick chat. It's less good as the place where availability, selection, match-day details, money and anything involving children all happen at once. This guide covers what safeguarding guidance says about team group chats, and a practical plan for moving the admin somewhere better without upsetting anyone.

Why team admin outgrows a group chat

• Important messages get buried. The meet time for Saturday sits under forty messages about a lost water bottle.
• Working out who's coming means counting replies. And then messaging the people who didn't answer.
• Everyone can see everyone's phone number. The GAA urged its clubs to avoid WhatsApp in 2020 over data protection concerns for exactly this reason (RTÉ).
• Selection news goes to the whole group. A child who wasn't picked finds out in front of everyone.

What the guidance says

These points apply to any messaging, not just WhatsApp – but they're hard to follow in an open group:

• The NSPCC Child Protection in Sport Unit's WhatsApp guide says messages should never be sent privately by a staff member to a young person.
• The FAW says it's inappropriate for adult coaches to communicate one-to-one with under-18s, recommends group messages instead, and asks for parental consent for under-16s.
• The FA's Guidance Note 6.1 says under-16s should not be in chat groups used by officials, coaches and parents. Section 6 of its safeguarding guidance covers digital communication with under-18s.
• The GAA's code of behaviour for underage players does not approve of messaging groups for underage players.
• WhatsApp's minimum age in the UK dropped from 16 to 13 in April 2024 (CNN), so a club policy that says “over 16s only” may be out of date. Check yours.

Decide what moves and what stays

You don't have to ban WhatsApp. Most teams do best by moving the things that need to be reliable, private or recorded:

• availability and squad selection
• match-day details – meet time, venue, kit and changes
• subs, match fees and who's paid
• anything involving children, and anything a welfare officer might need to see later

A social group for the parents can carry on if your club is happy with it. Just keep players – especially under-16s – out of groups with adults, and keep team news out of it.

A two-week plan

Before you start (one evening)

1. Set up your team in your new app. Import your members from a spreadsheet (or from another app's member export).
2. Add your fixtures – from a calendar link or CSV if your league has one – and set up training for the season, with skip dates.
3. Tell your club welfare officer what you're doing. They'll probably be pleased.

Day one: tell the group

Post a short, friendly message in the WhatsApp group. Something like:

“We're moving team admin – availability, match details and subs – to [app] from next week. You'll get an email invitation; you can answer from the link without installing anything. It keeps everyone's phone numbers private and means nothing important gets lost. We'll keep this group for two weeks while everyone settles in, then close it [or: switch it to announcements only].”

Week one: run both

• Send the first availability requests through the app, and let the automatic reminders do the chasing.
• If someone asks in WhatsApp, answer with a link to the event rather than the details themselves.
• Help the one or two families who get stuck – often it's an invitation sitting in a spam folder.

Week two: app first

• Post team news only in the app.
• At the end of the week, close the group or change it so only admins can post.

How Squono helps

Squono is free for every team. Team chat is for the adults around the team, with no private messages between adults and children. Families join with an email address, so nobody has to share their phone number, and they can answer invitations and pay from a link without installing anything. See availability and match invites.