The season does not start in September. It starts now, in the quiet weeks of June and July, when nobody is thinking about football. I used to leave everything until the week before the first friendly and then spend August in a panic, chasing registration forms and trying to remember who said they were leaving. After a couple of years of that with my Springhead lot I started writing a list in June instead, and the difference is night and day. Here is the pre-season checklist I work through now, roughly in the order I do it.
Sort the squad before anything else
Everything else depends on knowing who you have actually got. Message every family from last season and ask a plain question: are you in for next year, yes or no. You will get a few maybes and that is fine, but you need the firm yeses counted before you can plan numbers. Once you know who is staying you can see the gaps. A squad that finished on eleven players and has lost three needs you to start asking around in July, not in the last week of August when every other team is doing the same. Get the registrations moving early too, because the parent who fills the form in on the first night is rare, and the FA paperwork is the thing most likely to hold up your first game.
Get the fixtures in before the season runs at you
When the league publishes the fixtures, most of us glance at the first game and close the tab. Do the opposite. Block the whole season into whatever you use to run the team while it is fresh, so parents can see dates and you are not answering the same kick-off question fifteen times a week. If your league runs on FA Full-Time, you do not have to type any of it in by hand. You can pull the lot across in one go, which is exactly the kind of job that eats an evening if you do it manually. I wrote up how I import fixtures from FA Full-Time, and there is a step by step version in the playbook if you want the screenshots. Twenty minutes in July saves you a season of fielding the same text on a Friday night.
Plan the first month of training, not the whole year
I used to try to map out a full season of sessions in pre-season and it never survived contact with September. Kids move up, the weather turns, half the squad is on holiday for the first three weeks. So now I only plan the first four sessions properly, with a clear focus for each, and leave the rest loose. Pre-season is the right time to get the basics back after a summer off: touch, fitness without making it miserable, and a couple of small sided games so they remember they like it. If you coach a younger age group, the ready made U9 session plans are a decent starting point you can copy and adjust. Keeping your sessions and attendance in one place on the training side means you can see who has actually turned up rather than guessing in October.
Decide how you will talk to parents
Most of the friction in a grassroots season is not football, it is communication. Sort it now and you save yourself months of grief. Agree one place where availability gets answered, so you are not stitching together a WhatsApp thread, three replies and a thumbs up to work out if you have a full team for Sunday. Set the tone early with parents about the sideline and about playing time, because the conversation you have in July is calm and the one you have in November after a defeat is not. The other thing I set up before the first game is how the parents hear about the match itself. I write a short match report after every game so the parent who could not make it still feels part of it, and so the kid who had a quiet game on the scoresheet still gets a mention for the thing they did well.
Do the boring kit and admin jobs in daylight
None of this is glamorous and all of it bites if you skip it. Count the balls and bibs, check who has grown out of last year's shirt, and find out now if you need to order anything, because kit suppliers get slow in August. Confirm your training slot and your home pitch for the new season rather than assuming. Check your own coaching qualification and first aid dates are still in date, and the same for anyone helping you. Sort the subs question early so the first night is not awkward, and write down what the season actually costs a family so you can answer honestly when a parent asks. These are fifteen minute jobs in June and full blown headaches in September.
Choose what you will actually track this year
Pick this before the season starts or you will never start. You do not need to record everything. The first year I tracked my team I kept it simple: who played where, who turned up to training, and a couple of lines on each game. By May that was the most useful thing I owned, because it told me the truth about the season instead of whatever I half remembered. Decide your one or two things now, set them up in whatever coaching tools you use, and you will be glad of it when a parent asks how their child is getting on or when you are picking the team for a cup tie.
Pre-season is not about peaking in friendlies. It is about doing the dull jobs while you have the time and the daylight, so that when the whistle goes on the first Sunday you can stand on the touchline and just coach. Get the list done in June and August looks after itself.