Tournament-day checklist: the 19 things that derail your weekend

The 30-minute checklist covers what to set up. This post is the other list — the one you make on the drive home after a tournament, with the heater on, going "I'm never letting that happen again."

I've kept that list for six years across three clubs. It has nineteen entries. Some of them happened once; a few of them happened at every event until I wrote the fix down and did it every time.

Each one below is: what goes wrong, why it keeps happening, and the one thing that stops it. Print it. Tick the fixes off the night before.

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Before the doors open

1. The court partitions take forty minutes, not ten

You booked the hall from 8am for a 9am start. The partition nets are in a storeroom, the trolley has a flat wheel, and nobody knows where the floor sockets are. First match starts at 9:35 and the whole day runs late from there.

The fix: ask the venue, in writing, how long the partitions take and who installs them. If it's you, arrive ninety minutes early, not sixty. If it's them, confirm the install time the day before.

2. The shuttle order is still with Australia Post

Six tubes short at 8:45am on a Saturday. The sports shop opens at 9.

The fix: shuttles arrive a week early or you don't rely on that order. Keep a reserve of two tubes per court in the club cupboard and replace them after every event, not before the next one.

3. One printed draw, and the printer died

Your only copy of the draw is on the laptop. The laptop is on 4% and the charger is at home.

The fix: two printed copies of every group and the bracket, printed the night before. If you run the event on software, the draw is on every phone in the hall anyway — but print two copies regardless. Paper doesn't need Wi-Fi.

4. The trophy engraver spelt the club name wrong

One letter. Nobody checked. It's now on eight trophies and the photos.

The fix: proof the engraving order twice, out loud, with a second person. Collect the trophies three days before the event, not the morning of.

5. Nobody has the umpire's phone number

The umpire is "on the way". Nobody can reach them. The first round is scheduled to start in ten minutes.

The fix: a group chat with every official in it, made the week before, with the venue address pinned. On the day, a missing person is one message, not a phone tree.

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The first hour

6. The captain who booked a family holiday for the same Saturday

They entered in March. They forgot. Their partner is standing at the desk asking who they're playing with.

The fix: a confirmation message five days out that asks for a reply, not just a read. Anyone who doesn't reply gets a phone call. The ones who've forgotten are always the ones who don't reply.

7. "I never entered that category"

The spreadsheet says Mixed Doubles. The player says they only entered Men's Doubles. The spreadsheet was last edited by someone who's not here.

The fix: a registration form that the player fills in themselves and a confirmation sent back to them with their categories listed. If they entered it, they've got the email. If you typed it in for them, you don't have a leg to stand on.

8. Check-in is a clipboard, and the clipboard has walked off

Twenty-two players are confirmed arrived. The clipboard with the ticks is on a bench somewhere.

The fix: check in on something that can't walk off and that more than one person can see. A shared sheet on a tablet at minimum; a QR code the player scans at best. Either way the desk sees arrivals without hunting for paper.

9. The walkover rule gets invented at 9:20am

A team is late. Their opponents want the walkover. The late team's mate says they're "two minutes away". You are now negotiating in front of a crowd.

The fix: publish the walkover window with the schedule — "ten minutes after scheduled start, the match is awarded" — and announce it in the briefing. On the day, you don't decide anything. You point at the rule.

10. Scorers were briefed as a group, and half of them weren't listening

Court 3 is scoring a single game to 21 with no cap. Court 1 is playing best of three. Both are in the same group.

The fix: brief scorers per court, at their court, with the format for their first match written on a card on the scorer's table. If scores go in on a phone, the format should be set per stage in the software so a scorer can't choose the wrong one.

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The middle of the day

11. The standings on the whiteboard are twenty minutes behind the courts

Nobody updated it after the 11:40 matches. Three players are planning their afternoon around the wrong table.

The fix: the standings live wherever the scores are entered, and update themselves. If that's a whiteboard, one person owns it and nothing else. If it's software, the public page is the whiteboard and the score entry is the update.

12. Someone's doing the tie-breaker maths on a phone calculator

Two teams level on wins. A heated discussion about "points difference" is taking place at the tournament desk. The actual BWF rule for two teams level is the result of the match between them — no maths at all.

The fix: know the order before the day: wins, then head-to-head for two teams, then game difference, then points difference, then lots. It's written up here. Better still, use something that applies it for you.

13. A withdrawal at 1pm leaves three group matches hanging

A player rolls an ankle. Their team can't continue. Their three remaining group matches are still on the schedule, and their opponents are asking what happens now.

The fix: decide the withdrawal rule before the event (the BWF rule voids the team's group results; a common house rule awards the matches), and close every remaining match the moment the withdrawal is confirmed. The schedule reflows, the opponents know where they stand, and the courts don't sit idle waiting for a match that isn't happening.

14. Court 2 is empty while Court 4 has a queue

The schedule put two long matches back to back on one court and two short ones on another. Players are standing around on one side of the hall and waiting ninety minutes on the other.

The fix: whoever runs the desk reorders a court's running order when it drifts. On paper that's a pen and a loud voice. In software it should be dragging a match to a different court, with the system checking that nobody ends up playing two matches at once.

15. "When's my next match?" — eighty-seven times

The honest count from one event. Each answer is thirty seconds. That's forty-five minutes of the organiser's day.

The fix: the schedule is where the players already look. A public page link pinned in the group chat and a Now & Next screen on the venue TV. The question stops when nobody needs to ask it.

16. The scorer's phone went to sleep mid-match and the score is gone

Eleven-all, phone locked, app closed, score not saved.

The fix: scoring that saves every point as it's entered, so a locked phone picks up where it left off. And a backup: a paper score sheet per court, filled in at the end of each game even when the phone is working.

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The finish

17. The knockout draw takes twenty minutes to build and everyone is watching

Group stage done at 2:50pm. The bracket is being worked out on the back of a draw sheet while sixteen players stand around cooling down.

The fix: decide the qualification rule (top two per group, cross-bracket) before the event, and build the bracket the moment the last group match is in. If it's software, this is one click and the bracket is on the TV before the players have found their water bottles.

18. The umpire turned up without a coin

A final. Two captains. No coin. Someone is looking for a 20-cent piece in a kit bag.

The fix: a coin lives in the tournament desk tin, next to the spare pens. It's also the coin you'll need if a group ends in a draw of lots.

19. The result booklet gets typed up at 11pm on Sunday

The event finished at 5. The results are on a whiteboard photo, two score sheets and someone's memory. The booklet goes out on Tuesday and three people reply to say their score is wrong.

The fix: results are recorded once, at the court, as they happen, in the thing that produces the booklet. Then the booklet is an export, not a typing job, and it's in the group chat before everyone has left the car park.

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The pattern

Read the fixes again and most of them are the same fix: decide it before the day, write it down, and put it where people already look. The walkover window, the withdrawal rule, the tie-breaker order, the shuttle reserve, the coin in the tin.

Tournament day is not the time to make decisions. It's the time to apply the ones you already made.

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Where BadiTournie helps, and where it doesn't

Honest split. Software does nothing about partitions, shuttles, engraving, the coin or the captain on holiday — items 1 to 6 and 18 are yours.

For the rest:

• Registration (7): players enter themselves through the public registration page, so the categories on the day are the ones they chose.
• Check-in (8): QR check-in from the player's phone, visible at the desk as it happens.
• Scoring format per stage (10): round-robin, quarter-finals, semis and final each carry their own rules, so a scorer can't pick the wrong one.
• Live standings and tie-breakers (11, 12): standings recalculate on every score, apply the BWF order, and mark any place that needs a draw of lots.
• Withdrawals (13): one action closes the team's remaining group matches under whichever walkover rule you set.
• Court running order (14): drag a match to another court; the system checks the clash.
• Now & Next (15): a public page for phones and a TV screen for the venue.
• Scoring that survives a locked phone (16): every point is saved as it goes.
• Knockout from standings (17): the bracket builds from the group results.
• Result booklet (19): PDF and Excel exports of fixtures, standings and results.

Free 7-day trial, no credit card. After that it's $39.99 AUD per event or $179 AUD a year for unlimited — see current pricing.

Print the list. Tick the fixes. Go home at six.