Team events

What a team event is

A team event is contested by teams — countries in a World Team Championship, clubs in an inter-club event — rather than by individual entrants. Teams meet in test matches. A test match is a set of rubbers played to a format (for example four singles and two doubles, each rubber best of 3), and the team that wins more rubbers wins the test.

Teams are an answer to the wizard's Who is entering? question — Country teams or Club teams — beside singles and doubles. The answer is currently gated per account. The event keeps the ordinary planner sections: the Teams section sits on the Players tab, Team tests is a format on the Format tab, team knockouts are on Knockout setup, and test-match scoring is on Scoring. Ordinary competitions can sit beside a Team tests competition in the same event.

Players

The roster works exactly as in any other event — every team member is an ordinary entry added on the Players section, with the usual WCF search, dGrades and withdrawal handling. Doubles pairs are not entered here: the doubles rubbers of a test are formed from team players when team sheets are submitted.

Teams

The Teams section is on the Players tab, below the roster. Teams are event-wide: every competition in the event sees the same teams and the same players on them.

On a team league season the tab is called Teams and the order is turned round: each club's team and captain come first, under a short note on who adds players, and Add from the player database (search, import, the season's full list) sits below them. A player reaches a team either way — added here by the league, to any club, or by the club's captain from My Team ▸ Team — and both land in the same season list.

Every player on a league season's team is also on that club's list. A player added straight to the season (typed, imported from the WCF list, or moved onto a club's team) is matched to the club's list by WCF player, then by name, and added to it if they are not there yet; a typed person matched by name takes on the WCF player's link and grade. On a league season, each player's name on a team is underlined when they are on the club's list: it opens their record in League settings — on People for a league manager, on My Team ▸ Players for the club's captain.

Add a team

Give each team a name (for example a country) and, optionally, a flag code for displays. Deleting a team returns its players to the unassigned pool; the roster entries themselves are untouched.

Team

A team league asks one question about venues on its Details: Where matches are played, either Multiple venues, each match at the home side's venue, or Single venue, named once on the league.

The answer changes six things. Whether each team is asked for a venue of its own or the league is asked for one. Where the public page, the availability email and the player's own page say each match is played. Whether the HOME marker appears on a match. Whether the venue is repeated under every match or named once. Whether the printed scoresheet reads Host Team and Visiting Team or Team twice.

It does not change the draw. Which side is named first is worked out by the match generator either way, so switching this does not reshuffle anything. It also promises nothing about how often a club hosts: three clubs where only two have a venue are not taking turns, and that is the schedule's business, not this setting's.

In an interclub league, each team on the league page can be linked to a venue from the catalog (Home venue — start typing; pick from the list, or keep the typed name if the club is not listed yet, with a link to add it). The venue names the venue in reminder emails. Each team also takes a logo and a colour; the colour stands in wherever there is no logo. New teams take the croquet colours in order — blue, red, black, yellow, then green, brown, pink, orange, purple — and a tenth team onwards gets lighter and darker runs of the same nine. Change any of them on the team's row. People on a team's row, in League settings ▸ Teams, opens Everyone in the league showing only that club's people.

On a test or demo season, each team offers + Fill with test players: made-up croquet names, enough to reach the team size limit (12 when there is none), never a real person and never a name already used elsewhere in the league. Clear N test players, beside the note at the top of the teams, removes every one of them at once; players added by name, by import or by a captain stay. A team league season does not show the roster's Test data card, whose ranked players would sit on no club's team. It is the quickest way to get a league far enough along to try the schedule, the availability emails and the scoring.

Assign roster players to each team with the Add a player to this team… picker, and remove them with remove. Each team member has an email for availability field: that is where the "can you play?" email goes (see Test matches → Availability). A player whose entry is linked to an account is emailed at the account's address when the field is blank. The team size limit is 6 by default; a team over the limit is flagged. Each test match later fields a side of four chosen from the team via the team sheet.

Seeding

Seed by team grade orders the teams on each team's top-4 average — the average dGrade of its four highest-graded players — and records that number as the team's seed grade. This is the GCWTC seeding basis. Seeds drive block assignment on the Format section.

Format

On the Format tab, choose Team tests for the competition. Its settings appear beneath the format picker.

Test match format

The format is a list of rubbers, each with a session number, a type (Singles or Doubles), a side entry for each team, a best-of and a game length. Three presets cover the GCWTC formats:

The 8 doubles preset is a club interclub match: two rounds of four doubles, each a single timed game, every player re-paired between rounds.

The side entries name team sheet positions, not players:

• S1–S4 — the singles order of merit, strongest first
• D1, D2 — the declared doubles pairings, in strength order
• R1, R2 — the highest and lowest positioned players not in the doubles (used by the 7-match format, where any two players may form the pairing)
• S1+S4 — a doubles side drawn from merit positions (the 9-match format's second-session doubles)

Rubbers can be added, removed and edited slot by slot, so formats other than the presets are expressible. Changing the format re-shapes future tests only; a test with a scored rubber keeps the format it was played to.

Standings & team sheets

• Table ranks on — Points (2 · 1 · 0) awards two points for a won test and one for a drawn test, and ranks on points. Test wins ranks on wins, with draws counting between a win and a loss.
• A rubber-split test — what a 3–3 test records: Stands as a draw, or Games, then hoops decide, which awards the test to the side with more net games across it, falling to net hoops when the games are level too.
• Order-of-merit tolerance — the dGrade margins used to check submitted team sheets. A singles order is flagged when a player is placed above someone whose dGrade is more than the singles tolerance higher; the doubles order is flagged when a higher-placed pairing's combined dGrade is more than the doubles tolerance lower than a lower-placed pairing's. The GCWTC values are 100 and 150.
• Tied teams resolve by — WCF (GCWTC Appendix B): a tie of exactly two teams goes to the test between them, then net games in that test, then net hoops in it; a larger tie goes to matches won across the block, then net games, then net hoops, re-splitting after each step. Simple chain applies one flat chain — matches, net games, net hoops — whatever the size of the tie.

Blocks

Blocks of teams work like blocks of players: add one or more, then place each team with Add a team to… and order it with the seed field. Two assignment shortcuts use the team seeds:

• Assign by seed (snake) — 1 → A, 2 → B, 3 → B, 4 → A, and so on across the blocks.
• GCWTC 12-team pattern — offered with exactly two blocks and twelve teams: Block A takes seeds 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12 and Block B takes 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11.

Season matches

On a league season the block is the season and Build the schedule replaces Generate tests. The questions run in this order.

Everyone in this division plays everyone else — once, home and home, or a number for three and up, to twelve. In a league on Multiple venues, home and home means every pair meets twice, once at each club's venue: the second half repeats the first round for round with every venue swapped, so with four teams round 1's T1 v T2 comes back in round 4 as T2 v T1. In a Single venue league the same button reads twice. Each pass after the first swaps which side is named first, so a pair that meets an even number of times meets each venue the same number of times.

No fixed dates turns the season into a list of matches with no date at all. The two sides arrange their own time and enter the score when it is played.

With dates, set the first round, the weekdays it is played on (one weekday, or several for more than one round a week), the interval from every week to every fourth week, an optional start time, and any skip dates, which step the round over that date rather than losing it.

A box above the button reports what will be built before it is built: the number of rounds, the number of matches, the first and last date, and whether an odd number of teams leaves one sitting out each round. Skip dates push the last date out, and the box reflects that.

Each match reads visitor at host. The host is side A on the scoresheet and enters the result. Rebuilding is refused once a game has a score, and it discards anything changed on the Calendar tab, so move single matches there rather than rebuilding.

Who hosts

Which side hosts is worked out for the whole draw, not match by match. Two things hold across any number of teams meeting any number of times.

Every club hosts half its matches, give or take the one match an odd number cannot split. No club plays more than five rounds running at the same venue, and in most draws no more than two or three.

Hosting cannot be set here for one match. Change it on the Calendar tab, where Swap sides moves a single match to the other venue.

Generate tests

Generate tests creates the block's round robin of test matches, each materialised from the current format. Six-team blocks use the GCWTC published order of play (round 1: 1 v 3, 2 v 4, 5 v 6 …); other sizes use the WCF round-robin grids. Regenerating replaces the block's tests and is refused once any rubber has a score.

League settings

League settings has a rail like the planner's. While a new league is being set up, Set up comes first, with a count of the steps done. It lists the steps in order — add the clubs, set up the league page, start the first season, invite each club's captain, and, for a manager who also captains, build their own team — and each step opens the section where it is done. Every other section carries a strip with the next step and All steps until the required steps are done, when Set up leaves the rail.

Seasons comes next, listing every season, with New season under it. Clicking a season opens its own sections — Players, Format, Calendar, Scoring — so any part of a season is one click from any league setting. The season planner's rail names the league's sections the same way, so the trip back is one click too.

My Team appears for anyone who runs a side: a league captain, a club admin, or someone made captain of a team on a season, which is how a manager who also captains is usually recorded (a member holds one league role, and a manager's is not captain). It is one item in the rail, named after the team, with your role under it. It holds the team and none of the league's own settings. On a test league, league managers also get Acting as captain of above My Team, listing every club: picking one shows My Team as that club's captain sees it, to try the league out as each captain without a second sign-in. Emails sent from there go out in the manager's name, and which club is the manager's own does not change. A season's own rail has Communication under Play, above Scoring, which opens My Team ▸ Messages. Below Scoring, Standings ↗ opens the season's public page (table, schedule, teams and statistics) in a new tab, at the league's address; before the page is published it opens the private preview. A season's event-page address (/tournaments/…) forwards to the league address for anyone who can see the season there, so the matches tab always reads Schedule.

The top of My Team shows the club's logo and name, the league, the home ground, a season picker when the team plays in more than one season, and your role. Under them are three facts: the next match (date, opponent, home or away, how many have answered and whether the lineup is picked), the season record in matches won and lost, and the number of players, with how many have no email. Below are six tabs:

• Overview — the next match, with Pick the lineup and a button to ask who can play or remind those who haven't answered; Needs doing, a list of what is missing (players with no email, a lineup not picked, nobody asked yet, players with no dGrade or estimate, estimates waiting for the league), each with a button to the tab where it is done; and the latest results.
• Matches — the team's matches for the season, next one first, each with its date, opponent, home or away, how many of the team have said they can play, and where the lineup stands (No lineup, Lineup draft, Lineup submitted, Lineup announced, Scored). Open goes to that match on the scoring page; Print sheet prints the team's sheet.
• Players — the club's list: everyone on the club across seasons, in a table with roles, dGrade, email, phone (a North American number is shown as (772) 555-1234, any other as typed; clicking it calls it), whether they are on this season's team (On / Off) and this season's record in games won–lost. Find a person filters by name; All, the season's name, No email and Inactive filter the list; clicking Person, dGrade or Record sorts by it. + Add people takes one person a line, Name, email, and Also put them on the [season] team (ticked by default) puts them straight on the season. On a GC league, Add first checks each name against the WCF player list: a single clear match is linked, a name with several close matches lists them to pick from (or None of these, add as typed), and a name not on the list is added as typed. A linked player brings their WCF dGrade; the name on the club's list is the one typed. Opening a person shows their first and last name, email and phone, with Call for the phone; Roles (Captain, Co-captain, Club admin, Professional — ticks, and a person can hold several); the Inactive tick; Put on / Take off the [season] team; Send estimate for approval for a player on the season with no dGrade; WCF player, showing whether they are linked to the WCF player list, with Link to WCF (or Change) to search that list and pick them, for someone added before they had a WCF record or added as typed — this brings in their WCF record and dGrade on every season they are on, and the name on the club's list stays as typed; and their record by season with a career total and their doubles partners. Delete… shows for someone who has never played: typing DELETE removes them from the list and from any season they are on. It is refused for someone in a lineup, and for yourself. Someone who has played cannot be deleted; tick Inactive instead. Save writes name, contacts, roles and status once for every season. An inactive person stays on the list with their history but is not offered for a season, is left out of "everyone on the list" emails, and cannot be put on a season until made active. A Captain, Co-captain or Club admin role gives powers in the tool once that person has signed in with the email on their record; until then it is a label, and Email an invitation to sign in sends them the invitation. A new season starts from everyone active on the list.
• Records — the team's results, filtered by season (or All seasons), by opponent club and by Both, Singles or Doubles. Players lists games played, won–lost and win percentage; Pairs lists each doubles pair's record together; a player's name in either opens them on Players; Against each club lists matches and games won and lost against each opponent. A game is one singles or doubles game within a match; games ruled shared are left out. Across seasons a player is matched by their world ranking, or by name at the club.
• Messages — the team's message centre. - Who can play lists the matches still to play. Each shows how many of the team said they can, maybe or can't, and how many haven't answered; clicking the count lists the names, and each name opens that player on Players. It also says when the team was last asked. - Ask who can play opens the "can you play?" email before it goes: the words around the buttons are fixed, and the message in the middle is yours for this week, pre-filled with the team's usual message. Keep this as our usual message makes it the one the automatic emails use too. - Chase N not answered sends the same email to only those who haven't replied. - Send a message writes to the whole team or chosen players, with a subject and message of your own. The message box has the same formatting bar as the event page's text: bold, italic, underline, headings, bulleted and numbered lists, a divider, text colours and links. Pasted text arrives unformatted. The email keeps the formatting, and Sent shows the message as plain text. The email's banner carries the club's logo, or the league's on a league-wide message, when one has been uploaded. A league manager can also write to Every captain or Every player this season. Replies come back to the sender's email. - Sent lists everything that has gone out this season, newest first: availability requests, lineup and reminder emails, automatic or by hand, and messages. Tapping one opens it: a message shows its text, an availability request shows the match and the line in the middle of the email, and each shows the names it went to. Names are kept for anything sent from 3 October 2026 on; earlier sends show the count only.
• Settings — Captains and club admins, with Invite a co-captain and Invite a club admin. A club admin is a club's back-office helper: they see the team, add and update players, enter scores and can email the team in their own name, but are not a captain or a player, so the automatic emails go out in the captain's name and do not go to them. Emails a captain, co-captain or club admin sends by hand go out in that person's name. Your line in the availability email sets the team's usual message. Automatic emails holds the team's automatic emails to its players — see Automatic emails. Team details holds the club's logo — Upload a logo (or Change logo and Remove) is the team's own to set, and the logo shows at the top of the team's emails and on the league page — the home ground the league has on file, and for a league manager, which team is theirs. On a phone the Players tab lists players as rows instead of a table; everything else is the same.

League holds Details, The league page, Teams, Team rules and People. On a test league, Start the live league sits at the foot of Details, above deleting a league, which sits there on every league.

On a team league, People opens with Everyone in the league: every club's list on one page, with each person's club, roles, email, phone and whether they sign in. Find by name or email, the club and role pickers and Active / Inactive / All narrow it. Clicking Person sorts by last name and Club by club; a second click reverses it. + Add people picks a club and takes one person a line, Name, email; Also put them on the club's [season] team (ticked by default) puts them on the season in play too. Names are checked against the WCF player list the same way as on the club's Players tab. Someone already on that club's list is skipped. Clicking a phone number calls it. Opening a person edits their name, contacts, roles and the Inactive tick; it is the same record the club's captain sees on My Team ▸ Players, so a change here shows there. Putting someone on or off a season's team, and their records, stay on the club's own Players tab. Below it, League access lists who can sign in to the league and what they can do (owner, manager, captain, club admin, player, viewer) and the invitations waiting. It is not the players list.

Start the live league

A test league is never listed and is visible only to its members. Start the live league, shown to the league's owner on a test league, makes a new live league from it. The test league is not changed, so it stays as a sandbox.

Name of the live league starts as the test league's name and can be changed. Start the live league, then Yes, start "[name]", makes it and opens it.

• Copied — the league's details, page, logo and settings; the clubs with their logos, venues and lawn names; each club's Players list, with emails, phones, roles and WCF links; the league's owner, managers, captains and club admins, and invitations not yet accepted; team rules, honours and email settings; and one season with the same name and set-up as the test league's latest season: competitions, divisions and the teams in each, match format, scoring settings, captain sign-off, the calendar pattern (days and start time) and the season's email settings.
• Not copied — people added by Fill with test players, fixtures, lineups, results, scoresheets, signatures, sent emails and availability replies. The season has no start date and no matches.

Nobody is emailed: owners, managers, captains and club admins already have their roles in the live league. Each step of the new season's Set up works as on any season: add the dates, generate the matches and publish.

Team rules

Team rules (team leagues) sets limits every team works within, for All divisions and, with + Rules for a division, for any division by name. A blank box is no limit.

• Team size — at least and at most. A team outside it is flagged on the captain's Team section.
• Each player's dGrade — from and to. Every player named on a team sheet must sit inside.
• Lineup average dGrade — from and to, for the average of the players named on a sheet.

A team sheet that breaks a rule is either Is blocked — a captain cannot submit it; a league manager can, and the sheet records why — or Is flagged — it is submitted with the broken rules recorded on the sheet.

A division's own values replace the all-divisions values box by box. For example, with All divisions players 1000–2200 and B Flight players 1400–1600, a B Flight sheet naming a 1650 player breaks the rule and an A Flight one does not.

Doubles partners sets how often the same two players may partner: Any pairing, any time (the default), Once per match (pairs re-form between rounds) or Once per season (a rotating-partner league). It is checked on each team sheet.

Playing order has two optional rules. Singles by rank puts the highest-graded player at S1, the next at S2, and so on. Doubles by combined dGrade puts the pair with the highest combined dGrade at D1 in each round. Each takes an allowance: players (or pairs) within that many points of each other may play in either order. With 50 points allowed, a 1520 may play S1 above a 1560, but not above a 1600.

A league season does not apply the WCF team-event rules on order of merit or on the same pairing meeting twice; only these rules, where set, are checked.

A player with no dGrade counts at the grade their captain estimates. The captain opens the player on My Team ▸ Players and presses Send estimate for approval; it counts at once, marked estimate, unconfirmed, and the league's owners and managers are emailed. Grades to confirm, under Team rules, lists each one: Confirm (at that grade or a changed one) records it as the player's grade for the season; Reject leaves the player ungraded. The rail shows how many are waiting.

Set up

A season has its own Set up checklist, first in the season's rail while any required step is left, and the season opens on it. Each step opens the tab that does it, and every other tab carries a strip with the next step and All steps.

For a team league the steps are, in order: Match format (what one match is, on Format), Divisions and matches (on Format), Check the calendar and Teams. How games and the table are scored is on Format too, under the divisions, and its defaults already work. Checking the calendar and teams are optional: the created dates already work, and captains can add their own players, so the Teams step shows how many teams have players rather than holding setup open.

For a box or round robin league: Add players, Format, Matches, Check the calendar, Scoring settings and Publish the season. A team league's list ends with Publish the season too. A league season has no Event Page or Display Board tab; See the league page ↗ on the checklist opens the league link.

The league page

A league's page is built from sections, the way an event page is, under The league page in League settings. Add a Text section for prose, a Location for where the clubs are, an Image for a photo or a crest. Each can be renamed, reordered, hidden or removed, and changes save as they are made.

The rules are one of those sections, not a separate box, so they can sit wherever they read best and be hidden for a season if they are being rewritten.

A Location section is titled Venues and starts with every venue the league already holds — the league's own in a single-venue league, otherwise each team's — named, linked to the venue catalogue and pinned from it. A venue added to a team later appears as a one-click add beside Add pin.

What is written here shows under Details on the league link and on every season, so it is written once rather than repeated each year. Before the first season, the league link has the same tabs: Seasons, then Details.

Own tab

Ticking Own tab on a section takes it out of Details and gives it a tab of its own in the page's nav, named by the section's title and placed before Details. With two sections ticked, Venues and Rules say, a season's tabs read Table · Schedule · Teams · Venues · Rules · Details. A season's own Event Page tab keeps only what belongs to that season.

A live preview of the real page sits beside the editor and refreshes a moment after each change saves, with Open to see it full size in its own tab. A section marked hidden is missing from the preview, because it is missing from the page.

The league link

A league has one address, /leagues/<its name>, and it opens on a season rather than listing them. That link is the one to put on a club website or in an email footer: it does not change from year to year, and it never shows a finished season as though it were the current one.

Which season it opens on is a setting, The league link shows, under Seasons on the league page. Left on Automatically, it opens on the most recent season that has started, and holds that season through the gap until the next one begins. Choosing a season instead pins it, which is how to put next season up a month early, or hold last season's table while the new one is still a skeleton.

Every season also keeps its own permanent address, and a band across the top of the page switches between them, so nothing is buried.

Draft seasons

A new season starts as a draft: the league's own people (its owners, managers, captains and players) see it, marked draft, and nobody else does — it is left out of the season switcher and the league page, and the league link never opens on it automatically. Publish the season, the last step of the season's Set up checklist, or Publish beside it in the seasons list, lets visitors see it as the league's visibility allows. Unpublish takes it back to a draft. Seasons that existed before drafts were introduced are published.

Honours

A league's roll of champions is its Honours, a tab on the league link and on every season's page. It is filled two ways:

• From a season's results. When a season is marked complete (Mark complete in the season's header), its champions go up: the top of each division's table — or, when the season ends in a play-off, the winner and runner-up of the final. A team league also records each team's record (for example 8–1 · +24 hoops) and who played for it, most games first. Reopen takes the season back off the board.
• By hand, for years before the league used this tool: League settings ▸ Honours ▸ Add a past season, with the season, the year it sorts by, an optional division, the placings and, optionally, who played for the champions.

Show on the board chooses how many places each season shows: Champions, Top two or Top three. The board lists seasons newest first with each club in its colour or logo, a Season results → link where the season was played in the app, and a Most titles line once a club has won more than once. A completed season's own page opens with a Champions banner.

The public page

Each league match also shows where it is played: the venue named on the match, or a one-venue league's venue, or wherever the home side plays. A match moved on the Calendar is marked not the usual venue, so a player who knows where their club plays sees that this one is different. A league that plays everything at one venue does not repeat it on every row.

The Teams list shows a Seed and an Avg. grade column only when some team has that number, and a Division column only when there is more than one. Avg. grade is the average dGrade of the team's top players, the figure that seeds a WCF draw; a club league usually has neither. Either column can be switched off for good under On the public Teams list on Scoring settings.

On a league season's page each club's logo sits on the same line as its name, the standings table drops the hoops for and against columns on a phone (hoop difference stays), and league pages have no Croquet Tools panel at the foot. A team event's public page shows each block's standings table (points, tests won/lost/drawn, matches, games, hoops), every test match with its rubbers — upcoming rubbers appear named once the team sheets are locked, with the format positions standing in before that — and, once results exist, a Statistics view: every player's singles and doubles record, win percentage, games and hoop difference, with each player's full match list a tap away.