Everything here describes the app exactly as it works today. Start with the rotations
walkthrough — it's the part with the most moving pieces.
Getting started
1
Open it, then install it
FootyLens runs in your browser — nothing to download from an app store. For the best
experience, add it to your home screen (your browser's share or menu button →
Add to Home Screen). Installed, it opens full-screen and works offline at the ground.
2
Sign in for backup
Signing in with your email switches on cloud backup and cross-device sync. You'll be
emailed a one-time code — no password to remember. You can use the app without signing
in, but your data then lives only on that one device.
3
Create your team and squad
Add a team, then build the squad: first name, nickname, jersey number. Positions are
optional — but picking one auto-sets the player's line, which the rotations system
uses everywhere.
Rotations — full walkthrough
Rotations has three layers: lines (who plays where), an optional plan
(who rotates first, and how long a stint should be), and the live queue that
suggests swaps during the game. Set up in that order.
1
Give every player a line
On the squad screen, each player has a BACKMIDRUCKFWD control. One line per player:
backs are blue,
mids gold,
rucks purple,
forwards red — the same colours
follow the player through every screen.
Rucks are their own rotation pool: the queue only ever swaps rucks with rucks.
Picking the Ruck position automatically sets the ruck line.
2
Build the rotation plan (before the game)
Tap Rotation plan (order & cadence) on the rotations setup screen — or the
Rotation plan button on the live screen itself, handy when you've opened a
prepared game. It lists only the players picked for this game; anyone who isn't playing
keeps their place in the order for next time. For each line:
Order — use the ▲▼ arrows to sequence players. Top of the list rotates on first;
the queue works down the list and cycles back to the top.
Cadence — an optional target stint length for the line. Type minutes
(12) or minutes:seconds (8:30). Leave it blank to use the
default target.
The plan saves as you go, stays with the squad week to week, and syncs to your other
devices. Changes count for the game in front of you right up until its clock first
starts; after that the running game keeps the plan it started with, and your edits
apply from the next game.
3
Start the session
Pick the players, set the quarter length, and tap Start Rotations. Everyone
begins on the bench — drag your starters on (grid, list or field view, whichever you
prefer). In the field view, dragging a player into the back, middle or forward third
sets their line automatically — except rucks, who keep their purple wherever they
stand.
4
Use the live queue
Once a plan exists and the clock is running, a suggestion bar appears above the board
whenever someone is due (or nearly due) to come off — one row per line, for example:
MIDS · OFF #7 Riley 0:41 over → ON #12 Harper · Swap.
Tap Swap to execute both changes. In the field view the incoming player
takes the outgoing player's spot.
Or ignore it and rotate however you like — the queue rebuilds from whatever you
actually did. There's nothing to dismiss and it never argues.
Who's suggested on? The next player in your plan order who is on the bench,
isn't in First Aid or the sin bin, and has had a breather since they last came off.
Skipped players keep their turn for the next pass.
Each player's target is, in order: a target you've set on that player this game →
the line's cadence → their typical stint from past games → the 12:00 default. The
amber/red timers on the player cards use exactly the same target, so the cards and
the queue always agree.
No suggestions showing? That's normal when: there's no plan for this team, nobody is
near their target yet, the line's bench is empty or still resting, or a line has only
one player.
5
Sin bin and First Aid
Setting a player to Disc starts a cumulative sin-bin timer that runs on game
time — it pauses at breaks and carries across quarters, so you're always looking at
total time served. First Aid time adds up across the whole game in the same way. Neither
is ever suggested back on by the queue.
6
After the siren
Finish the session and it backs up automatically. You get a full game-time report —
every player's minutes, percentage of match, and the equity spread — shareable as an
image. If a stats match exists for the same team on the same day, the game-time block
appears inside that match summary too.
Under the report, Player notes takes a note on any player. It appears only once
the game is finished, never while it's being played. Notes are private: see
Backup, sync & sharing.
Quickest useful setup: lines only, no plan. You still get colours,
game-time tracking, equity reporting and the sin-bin timer. Add the plan when you want the
queue making suggestions.
Match stats
Create a match (team, opposition, round, venue), choose your stat set, and start.
Tap stats as they happen — scores build quarter by quarter. It works completely
offline; everything syncs when signal returns.
After finishing: share the match summary image (scores, quarter progression,
top stat comparisons, efficiency numbers), the parent-friendly image
(celebration version — result and score, none of the analysis), or the full
coach report as a PDF via the print dialog.
A finished match with a team list also has Player notes at the end of its
summary, for a private note on each player.
Whiteboard & drills
The whiteboard shows the full oval plus Centre, Forward 50 and Defensive 50 views, with
your squad as magnets. On the full oval your defensive end is at the top and you attack
the bottom end (left and right when the field is across the screen, see below), as the
labels on the field show; Flip ends swaps them. The
50 m views zoom in on that end of the ground.
A new board starts with up to 18 players on the full oval in a centre throw-up shape: six
in each 50, four in the centre square with the ruck in the circle, and one on each wing.
With fewer than 18, the players are spread across the backs, centre and forwards (12
gives four in each). A player with a set position in the Squad List starts in that
position. Anyone else goes on the bench, and in the other three views everyone starts on
the bench.
Draw with Pen, Arrow or Curve in one of three colours: gold
for your players' runs, blue for the opposition's, white for the ball or a note. Turn on
Dashed for a kick or handball. Choosing a colour switches to the pen. On a
phone, tap Pen or Arrow a second time for the colours, dashed lines
and the curved arrow; More holds everything else.
Erase removes a line, an opposition marker or the ball, and dragging it wipes
every line it passes over; squad players can only be moved. Undo steps back through your changes on this board: moves, lines,
markers, frames, structures, Reset, Flip ends, Players and Clear. It remembers them until
you open another board or reload the app; after that, Undo removes the frame's last
line.
Opposition and Ball add markers to the current frame.
Structures (full oval only) and Reset rearrange your players in the
current frame and ask first. Clear asks before removing every line in the
frame.
Players adds or removes squad members in every view and frame; new players
appear on the bench. The bench arranges itself as players come and go.
+ under the board copies the current frame so you can show the next step;
▶ plays the frames in order.
Export shares or downloads a picture of the current frame, with a key to the
line colours.
Every change is kept on this device as your board in progress, but it isn't backed up
until you save it. Save setup stores the whole board, all four views and every
frame, as a named setup. Once the board has been saved, or if you opened it from a saved
setup, Save setup updates that setup; Save as new keeps the original and
stores a copy (on a phone it's under More). Saved setups sync to your other devices. If you start another board
while the one in progress has unsaved changes, FootyLens asks whether to save them first.
Save as drill turns the view you're looking at, with all its frames, into a
reusable drill in the library's Mine tab. Player names are removed and bench
players are left out; jersey numbers stay. A board opened from one of your drills offers
Update drill and Save as new drill instead (see
Drill Library).
On a laptop, a touchscreen laptop or a tablet held sideways, the field turns across
the screen when that shows it bigger: you defend the left-hand end and attack the
right, the bench is at the right-hand end, and the frames sit under the set-up tools on
the right. Only the picture turns. Your setups, exported pictures and drills are the
same on every device. To keep the field up the screen on this device, open
⋯ and turn off Turn the field on wide screens.
With a pen, the eraser end (if your pen has one) works like Erase whichever
tool is on. While you're using the pen on the board, touches on the board are ignored,
so you can rest your hand on the screen.
Keyboard shortcuts on the whiteboard: V or M Move, P Pen,
A Arrow, C Curve, E Erase, D Dashed,
N Names, O opposition player, B ball, ←→ previous and next frame, Ctrl+Z Undo and
Ctrl+S Save setup (⌘ on a Mac). Tab to a player
and the arrow keys move it; Delete removes a marker.
Drill Library
89 drills, each set out as coaching steps with a board for every step. Junior holds
20 drills for U8 to U11. Youth holds 45 drills for U13 to U17 in four groups
(Warm-up & Coordination; Handball, Contest & Pressure; Kicking, Marking &
Finishing; Pressure, Contest & Tactical Games), then 24 Youth Game Sense drills.
Mine holds the drills you've saved from the whiteboard.
Choose an age
Pick an age from U8 to U17 at the top of the library; this device remembers it. Until
you pick one, each drill shows its youngest version.
While the session selected in the library has a team with an age group, the library
uses that team's age and the age list is locked. Seniors and Reserves use U17.
When a drill has no version for the age, it shows the next age up, or its oldest
version if there's none above, and the drill's page says so. At U12, youth drills show U13
and junior drills show U11.
The age buttons on a drill's page switch that drill to another age. The choice holds
until you change the age, the session or the session's team, or reopen FootyLens.
Youth Game Sense drills have one version for every age, so they have no age buttons.
Read a drill
Tap a drill to open it on its own page. The board comes first: ‹ and
› move between steps, the step numbers jump to a step, and Play
runs the movement again. Under the board is what happens in the step shown. If your
device is set to reduce motion, the board shows where each step ends; Play
still runs it.
Setup, Coaching, Ladder and Safety hold the rest of the drill.
On a laptop, or a tablet held sideways, the board stays in view beside them.
← at the top takes you back to the same place in the list. With a keyboard,
the arrow keys step through the drill and Esc goes back.
The progression ladder highlights the age you're looking at.
A Contact chip marks the drills flagged for contact, and a dot on their
Safety tab. Every drill has a safety note; read it before you run the drill. Youth Game Sense drills also show
their intensity.
Search looks at names, IDs (such as D20), focus, group, phase and objectives, and finds
a renamed drill by its old name; the drill's page shows that name as “Previously …”. The
filters narrow the list by group or focus, by the players you have and by the time
available.
Your own drills
In Mine, ‹ and › under the board step through a drill's
frames.
Edit notes holds the objective, duration, players, space, equipment, setup
and coaching points (one per line). Notes show on the card and print on the session
plan, and the equipment goes into the plan's checklist.
Open on whiteboard puts the drill on the whiteboard with its jersey numbers
but no names and no team, and asks first if the board in progress has unsaved changes.
The board has no squad, so Reset, Structures and
Players don't apply. Under ⋯ (More on a phone),
Update drill saves the board into the same drill and keeps its notes, so
sessions that use it show the new board; Save as new drill keeps the
original and saves the board as a new drill, without notes.
Renaming one of your drills keeps it in the sessions that use it.
Saved sessions after the update
Sessions saved before version 0.41.0 keep working. Drills that were renamed are found under
their new names. Seven drills have left the library; a session that uses one still opens
and prints it as it was, marked as retired.
Training sessions
In the Drill Library, create a session and add drills to it from any tab — including
your own — with + Session. A library drill goes in at the age its page is
showing. Open the session to set the date, start time, location, team and notes, change a
drill's age, give any drill a minutes override or a coach note, and reorder freely. The
session's team also sets the library's age while the session is selected. Then
Print / PDF produces a professional session plan: a running schedule with
clock times, a detailed block per drill, an equipment checklist and your notes. A library
drill's block shows its age, its steps for that age, the board for its first step, its
coaching points (coaching cues for Youth Game Sense) and its safety note, marked
Contact where the drill is flagged; one of your own drills shows its first frame and
its notes. Save the plan as a PDF or print it for the clipboard.
Backup, sync & sharing
Backup is automatic
Signed in, the app syncs whenever it realistically can: when you open or return to it,
when a match or rotation session finishes, shortly after edits, and the moment a
connection comes back after a dropout. There's a manual sync button too, but you
shouldn't need it.
The red "Never backed up" warning appears when you delete a match, a
rotation record, a saved whiteboard setup or one of your own drills that has never reached
the cloud. It means exactly what it says: that record exists only on this device, and
deleting it is permanent. If you see it unexpectedly, sync first, delete second.
Browsers can clear locally stored data after long periods of inactivity — the cloud copy
is your safety net over the off-season. Sign in, let it sync, and your records are safe.
Player notes are private
Notes you write on players after a game are only for you. With cross-device sync on,
they're encrypted with your sync passphrase and reach only your own devices; until then
they stay on the device you wrote them on. People you share a team or match with can't
see them, and notes never appear in printed reports, exports or share images. Deleting
a game deletes its notes.
Sharing with an analyst or co-coach
Sharing a team or match grants access to an email address — FootyLens does not send
them an email. After you create the share, the app shows you a ready-made invitation
to send yourself (share sheet or copy). The moment that person signs in to FootyLens
with the invited address, the shared team or match appears in their account — nothing
to accept.
FAQ
Does it work without phone signal?
Yes — that's the design. Stat capture, rotations, the whiteboard and the drill library
all work fully offline. Anything recorded offline syncs automatically when a connection
returns.
Do I need an iPad? Does it work on Android?
Any modern browser on a tablet or phone runs FootyLens — there's no app store and no
Apple requirement. Development and testing have centred on iPad, so that's the most
polished experience today; Android works via Chrome, with a formal test pass on the
roadmap.
Why isn't the rotation queue suggesting anything?
Four common reasons: no rotation plan exists for this team (the plan is the on-switch);
nobody is close to their target stint yet; everyone on that line's bench is in First
Aid, the sin bin, or still having their breather; or the line only has one player.
The queue would rather stay silent than guess.
I dragged my ruck around the field and expected their line to change — it didn't.
Deliberate. The field's three zones map to back, mid and forward, so a zone drag can't
express "ruck" — and silently turning your ruck into a mid would corrupt the rotation
pools. Change a ruck's line from the squad screen, the grid columns, or the player's
status sheet.
I shared a team and the other person never got an email.
Correct — no email is sent. Sharing grants access to their address inside FootyLens;
the dialog that appears after sharing gives you the invitation to send them yourself.
Once they sign in with that address, the share appears automatically.
What does the red "Never backed up" delete warning mean?
The match, rotation record, saved whiteboard setup or drill you're deleting has never
synced to the cloud, so there is no copy anywhere else — deleting it is unrecoverable.
Sync first if you want a safety net.
Can I use it on two devices?
Yes — sign in with the same email on both. Matches, rotations, squads, plans, saved
whiteboard setups and drills all sync. A whiteboard you haven't saved stays on the device
you drew it on. Player names are encrypted on your device before they upload.
Is my players' data safe?
That question gets its own document — read the privacy
statement. The short version: local-first, encrypted names in the synced squad
data, parents receive static images rather than hosted links, and no accounts for
children.
Something looks wrong or confusing — what do I do?
Tell the coach who built it. FootyLens is in Beta and feedback from the sideline is
what drives every release.