Message your team, or just the people it concerns

Messages live under Messages on your team screen. Any parent or member of staff can start one — a coach, a manager, or a parent arranging a lift.

People invited only to watch a player do not take part. They get the match alerts and the recap, and nothing else: they cannot be written to and cannot write. See who can see your child.

Send to everybody

1. Open Messages, then New message.
2. Leave it on Whole team.
3. Add a subject if it helps. Write the message. Send.

You should see the conversation at the top of the list.

Send to one or two people

1. New message, then Choose people.
2. Tap the names. Tap again to remove.
3. Write it and send.

You should see the conversation marked with a padlock, titled with the names you picked.

Only those people can see it. Everybody else on the team sees nothing at all — not a locked entry, not a subject, nothing.

Knowing it arrived

Underneath the last message is Seen by 4 of 11.

That is the point of the whole screen. Without it the usual thing happens: you post, you have no idea whether anyone read it, so you post again and text everybody as well — and families learn the app is noise.

It counts people who opened the conversation after your message was sent. It does not say when anybody was last active, and it is not a location.

Fixing a message you already sent

Everybody gets a time wrong occasionally. Both of these are on the message itself.

Edit changes the words. Only the person who wrote a message can edit it — not even whoever runs the team, because a message that changed while still carrying somebody else's name is worse than a wrong one.

The message is marked edited afterwards. That is deliberate: somebody may have screenshotted it or read it an hour ago, and a conversation that can change without saying so is one nobody can rely on.

Remove takes it down. The conversation keeps its place and shows *Message removed* where it was, so a thread does not quietly lose a turn and leave the replies to it making no sense.

You should see the message replaced by "Message removed", with the sender's name still on it.

Whoever runs the team can remove anybody's message. That is there so a message about a child that should not have been posted can be taken down without waiting for whoever sent it.

Removing cannot be undone, and there is no way to bring a message back. If it was a mistake, post again.

Turning down the noise

Mute at the top of a conversation silences that conversation only. It stays in your list and you can still read it.

This is deliberately not an app-wide setting. A parent with two children across three teams who can only silence everything will silence everything, and then miss the cancellation.

Switching messages off for the whole team

If your team already lives in WhatsApp, a second inbox nobody reads is worse than none. An owner or manager can use Turn off for this team.

Off means off: nobody can send or read, and the block is enforced on our servers, not just hidden on screen. Only an owner or manager can turn it back on, and only they can see the switch once it is off.

Messages from your club

A notice sent by the club to every team arrives here too, marked with a megaphone so you can tell it from a message your coach wrote.

Replying to one stays inside your team. Your reply goes to your own team, not to every family in the club — which is why it is safe to reply at all.

Troubleshooting

"Messaging is switched off for this team." Somebody used the switch above. An owner or manager can turn it back on.

I cannot find who I want to message. The list shows people with an account on the team. A parent who has never signed in is not there yet — invite them from the people screen.

I picked nobody and it would not send. A message addressed to nobody looks sent and reaches no one, so it is refused. Pick someone, or send to the whole team.

The seen count is not going up. People have not opened it. That is the count doing its job — it is the reason to follow up, rather than a fault.

Can I message somebody outside my team? No. Conversations belong to a team, and everyone in one is already on it.