How to use podcasting to boost your football club

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Image credit: PxHere website

With so many ways to connect to different communities, it is important to be able to understand and effectively use a range of mediums to reach your members and fans.

Podcasting stands as one of the most personal and intimate of these techniques and can allow your community to gain a deeper insight into and greater connection with your club.

Often thought of as a difficult or expensive form of media to create, podcasting can actually be quite simple.

Here are a number of tips and tricks to help you get started.

Tone and Content

Before diving into equipment or beginning recording, it is crucial to know what type of podcast you wish to create.

As an audio format, podcasts lend themselves well to interviews and conversations. Consider inviting players or coaches on for a chat before or after a game or during the week to discuss how the club is travelling.

Alternatively, you could incorporate members of your club’s community such as volunteers, former players and coaches or club historians to highlight special stories from your club’s past or present.

If you would prefer to create easily made quickfire content, your club could release match reports in the form of podcasts, which convey what happened to those who may have missed the game.

Similarly, a short club news podcast can update listeners about the upcoming fixture or club events, or important information such as administration or fee changes.

Furthermore, its essential to find ways to make your podcast more interesting and set it apart from others.

Natural sound provides one way to add spark. On gameday, try to get snippets of natural sounds such as crowd noise, or the kick of the ball to weave into your podcast to give it life.

Additionally, you can also choose to incorporate cameras to create an audiovisual podcast.

Above all, your podcast should draw in listeners and attempt to grow the club, so you need to avoid content which could degrade the club’s image.

Overly negative analytical podcasts can hurt the confidence of players and fans, while an ill-fitting tone will fail to garner an audience.

It is important when creating your podcast that you capture a tone that sounds authentic. If your audience finds you honest, they are far more likely to connect with your content and potentially listen to more of what you release.

After you have decided on what you wish to create, try to maintain a familiar style. If the form of your podcast frequently changes it can become difficult for your audience to remain attached.

Equipment and Software

Many people dread the costs of the equipment or software they need to begin podcasting but there are range of solutions available.

While professional cameras or microphones will deliver professional quality, it is possible to achieve sufficient results from modern smartphones.

However, your equipment will not matter if you do not set up your recording environment properly.

To get the best audio quality, always attempt to find a place where outside noise will not disrupt you or where your voice won’t echo. Noise will bounce off hard and sharp surfaces, so try to find areas with soft surfaces like curtains and carpets to dampen echoes.

If you do not have access to a good place to record, recording in a car or with a blanket over your head can provide makeshift solutions.

There are also a range of accessories available to help make your podcasting journey much smoother:

  • Pop filters, to help reduce harsh speech sounds.
  • Stands and mounts, to help set up your equipment comfortably.
  • Lights, to illuminate your face to your audience.

To record and edit your podcast you will need software programs.

Free options such as Audacity and GarageBand stand as good beginner options, while Adobe Audition, Hindenburg Pro and Descript provide professional alternatives.

For long distance audio visual recording between different parties, Zoom will allow you to record on a free plan.

Marketing Your Podcast

After you have created your podcast, try to release it on as many platforms as you can to reach your audience anywhere.

Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube are among some of the most popular podcast platforms available, but if you have a club website attempt to release your podcast there too.

You do not have to release your podcast frequently, but it should maintain a consistent release schedule, so your listeners know when to listen to it.

A bonus of podcasting is that it can also feed into your regular club media.

In your club newsletters, match reports and social media posts, consider quoting interviews or reposting clips from your podcast to continually build its following.

If you would like to know more, click here.

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Active Club Program offers South Australian football clubs a funding boost

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Image Credits: Shutterstock 2327752993

South Australian football clubs can tap into another round of government support, with the Active Club Program offering grants of up to $3,000 to help clubs improve participation and strengthen their local communities. The Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing (ORSR) opened its new round of funding on the 28th of August. Clubs have until midday on Wednesday, 14 October 2026 to apply.

The grassroots benefits

The South Australian Government has allocated $1.448 million to the round. Clubs with fewer than 100 members can receive $1,500. Clubs with 100 or more members can receive $3,000. The program targets grassroots sport, including football. It helps clubs purchase equipment and resources that make participation easier and more affordable.

Football clubs can use the funding for sporting equipment, uniforms and protective gear. They can also fund playing venue maintenance equipment, professional development, medical equipment and training. The program also supports projects that improve inclusion. Clubs can use grants for positive health initiatives and hardship subsidies. These measures can help remove barriers that stop people from playing sport.

That focus creates opportunities for football clubs to support more women and girls. It can also help clubs create more welcoming environments for players of different ages and backgrounds. Water and energy efficiency also form part of the program. Clubs can fund eligible initiatives that reduce water use or improve energy efficiency. That could prove particularly valuable for football clubs managing local playing venues and facilities. The program also allows minor club infrastructure upgrades and technology that directly supports participation or club sustainability.

Who is eligible?

To qualify, a club must operate as a not-for-profit sport or active recreation organisation in South Australia. It must have at least 20 members and have operated for at least 12 months.

ORSR will also consider a club’s participation profile when assessing applications. The assessment looks at female and male junior and senior participation, alongside factors such as the club’s affiliation and when it last received Active Club Program funding.

How to apply

The funding can make a direct difference at grassroots level. In the previous round, 558 South Australian clubs shared more than $1.4 million. The government says the investment helped clubs meet essential costs while supporting participation and inclusion.

For football, that support can stretch beyond the playing field. Stronger clubs create more opportunities for players, coaches and volunteers. They also provide places where people can build connections and stay active. Applications for Round 56 will be screened in November, assessed in December, with clubs notified in January 2027.

To learn more about the South Australian Active Club Program, visit their website.

The Spreadsheet Is Dead: Majestri’s Fix for How Clubs Actually Assess Players

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If you’ve ever sat through a club’s end-of-season review, you’ll know the drill. A coach pulls out a folder of notes, someone half-remembers what a player was like back in Round 3 and a parent quietly wonders what they actually got for their rego fees beyond a team photo. Football club platform Majestri says it has a fix for that, and it’s built directly into its Player Assessment module.

Why clubs bother assessing players in the first place

According to Majestri, clubs run player assessments for one of three reasons – usually more than one at once. Some are chasing genuine development, using the data to lift the level across their high-performance squads. Others are after a fairer way to pick teams, putting every player on the same measurable scale so selection is based on evidence rather than a coach’s gut feel about who “looks the part.” And for clubs operating under a Football Australia or state federation licence, assessments at set intervals often aren’t optional – they’re a compliance requirement, with the paperwork to prove it when asked.

Whatever the motivation, Majestri’s pitch is the same: don’t let that assessment data die in a spreadsheet on someone’s laptop.

Build your own assessment, your way

There’s no one-size-fits-all template here. The Assessment Designer lets technical directors set their own criteria, sort them into whatever categories their coaching staff already use – think core skills, possession, defending, attacking – and decide what each point on the rating scale actually means. Crucially, every criterion also gets a comment field, because a bare number rarely tells the full story of a player’s development.

The Assessment Module Builder for an NPL Juniors assessment
The Assessment Module Builder, showing an NPL Juniors assessment with a 1-10 rating scale banded from under performing through to excelling and role-specific criteria grouped into core skills, possession, defending and attacking. Source: Majestri.

Build it once and it’s reusable every time that assessment cycle comes around, so every player and every coach – is working off the same yardstick.

Something for the parents to actually take home

One of the more relatable pain points Majestri is targeting: most families never see much tangible return from a season of fees beyond a team photo. Player Assessment addresses that with report cards – colour-coded against the same scale coaches used, grouped by category with averages calculated automatically, and delivered as a PDF or an interactive web page a parent can read without needing a coaching badge themselves.

A player report card for an under-15 player
A report card for an under-15 player, colour-coded from under performing to excelling, with a score for every criterion and a group average across core skills, possession, defending and attacking. Source: Majestri.

 

Turning the numbers into something useful

The real value, though, sits in what Majestri calls the Player Analysis Lab. This is where clubs can plot a player against their team-mates or an entire age group across two categories at once, spotting clusters and outliers at a glance. Every score gets read against the group average – so a “7” actually means something in context – and clubs can report at the broad category level or drill into individual fields underneath. The results can be filtered down and exported for selection meetings or grading purposes.

The Player Analysis Lab comparing players in an under-15 and under-16 squad
The Player Analysis Lab comparing seven players across under-15 and under-16 squads, with a scatter plot, a sortable table of scores against the player average, and controls for choosing which categories and fields to report on. Source: Majestri.

The admin side nobody enjoys, made easier

Beyond the flashy analytics, there’s a practical layer built for the volunteers actually running the process:

  • Sweep monitoring – a quick view of which assessments are done and which are still outstanding, organised into defined assessment periods so progress can be tracked against peers.
  • Individual development plans – every player gets a personalised plan, and clubs can group common improvement areas to run cross-team training sessions that lift the whole club rather than just one squad.
  • Access control – coaches and technical staff can only see assessments for the teams they’re responsible for, and completed assessments are only visible to people linked to that player’s registration.
“Hard numbers to draw on when you review coaching staff and curriculum – and something tangible for the players and parents who pay the fees.” – Majestri

 

The bigger picture

Majestri frames all of this as sitting on top of the club’s own data – assessment results live on each player’s profile inside the platform rather than in a spreadsheet that walks out the door when a technical director moves on. For committees, it also means hard numbers to lean on when reviewing coaching staff or curriculum, rather than relying on anecdote.

It’s a fairly clear read on where club administration software is heading: less about digitising paperwork for its own sake, and more about making the data clubs already collect actually work for player development, team selection and compliance  without adding to the workload of the volunteers who run the show.

For more information on Majestri’s Player Assessment module, visit majestri.com.au/player-assessment.

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