As part of a commitment by The FA and County FAs to improve the administration experience for grassroots football volunteers, new online player registration functionality has recently been introduced into the Whole Game System (WGS).

Whole Game System

Following a successful six-month pilot programme, during which over 130,000 players were registered across 50 participating leagues, the new functionality has been made available to all grassroots leagues and clubs in England.

Whilst some leagues may initially decide not to use WGS for player registration purposes, all clubs will still benefit from using the system to maintain and manage their players' records.

Amongst these benefits are:

• Secure storage of player records
• Records updated annually, creating a lasting history for each player
• Club and Team records available for league registration processes (where appropriate)
• More efficient club discipline management
• Use of the FA number (FAN) to create a single player view – particularly for clubs using Full-Time
• Providing your club with better player information to help you plan for the future

Clubs within leagues who are using Full-Time to manage fixtures and competitions administration will be able to match player records between that system and WGS.

This will save them from having to duplicate effort and will ensure that, for the first time, they will have a single view of players in both Full-Time and WGS.

Any players not already in Full-Time can be searched for and added directly into WGS using the FAN search function. This allows clubs to easily and securely identify players from across the national database.

Once they have found and attached players, they can then assign them to the appropriate team. At this stage the process is then complete and records are up to date and ready to be presented for league registration.