We need to talk about....ClubHub

I think it took most people by surprise – all of a sudden there it was, an all dancing, all singing, brand shiny new piece of bespoke software that would make our lives easier…..we were told. But like a child with Attention Deficit Syndrome, ClubHub demands an awful lot of our attention and effort.

The basic idea of ClubHub is simple. Every player is registered on ClubHub and can then log on and mark their availability, or otherwise, against the relevant games, and then bingo – the selection committee has all the information it needs at its finger-tips to select the teams from the available players. The selected teams are entered on ClubHub, the player logs on to see his selection, confirms it and receives instructions for the day. Simples.

Except like any computer application – rubbish in, rubbish out – and that’s what we had last season as the player availability data was rubbish. It was inaccurate and incomplete and therefore almost worse than not having anything at all. Every player availability had to be rechecked as we couldn’t rely upon it and there were an awful lot of players who couldn’t be bothered to even register yet alone use it. So selection required the usual manic texting and phone calls with players to confirm availability before selection could be confirmed. To cap it all the selected teams were posted on the club website so players didn’t even have to use ClubHub to check their selection.

The reason for this mess, in hindsight, is obvious. No one is going to make any effort to do anything unless they can see the benefit of it. And a lot of players could not see the point of putting their availability on ClubHub when the old system of telling the captain worked ok as they got their game of cricket each week as always.

But for us captains it doesn’t stop there. We have to enter our selected side on ClubHub, then confirm whether they played or not and finally enter the result. We were asked to do all this to make it easier for the data to be collected for the Club Mark accreditation. Fair enough, because this is vital to the club for grants – except that players are not buying into this importance.

So what will happen next season? To my mind either players see the value of it and use it, or we ‘make’ the players use it, or we drop it (and just use for youths which generally works apparently). Whatever happens I hope it is soon discussed and agreed by the membership for I have better things to do with my time – like writing blogs.