My Comet My Earthbound Asteroid Disaster

Whoever in NZF that decided that Comet would be a great bit of software to align us all with, needs a FUDGING Rocket, to be fired, hung up, drawn, quartered, stoned and made to deal with every bludy volunteer's phone calls, emails etc from those who can't register their kids for a month.
It is unbelievable what a fiasco this is. Sure some people may be able to register themselves, following instructions online if they are lucky or very computer literate and resilient. However, there are plenty of people that aren't.
This week in my junior club (we usually have about ten to 14 teams) I have had the following:
A disabled mum who has contacted me five times, including visiting me at my work twice, trying to register her son, who played last year. With help she has got an email back from Comet with her son's username and telling her to change the password. She has done that and still gets an error when trying to register him.
A grandmother who sent messages then visited me so I could try and help her. Of course I can't do it properly, because all contact from Comet goes to her private email address. We try and re-register her moko who played previously. Fail. I showed her how to register her other moko who might be a first time player. Good luck with that. Go home and try.
Five emails from other people who are having trouble registering their kids.
Four emails from Comet saying the same player has registered, including with the very same "Seller" number and "customer" number.
I have sent emails asking for assistance to our Federation's poor go to person. I get an automated response

"Thank you for your email. Due to the high volume of emails I'm currently receiving my response may be delayed."

Surely the terminology used by Comet, things like Seller (meaning club), purchases (meaning what grades people have enrolled with) should have alerted NZF that this system might not be suitable for football???????

What a bludy joke of a system. We deserve a humble apology from NZ Football for this.

I believe NZF thought they had done a good job til the feds said ‘you what??!’

Sounds like a significant issue as well for refs. We use to be able to register our availability in hour blocks, not just whole days. I.e available after 1pm on Saturdays, looks like comet can't handle this... So we have to email the poor scheduler and they have to sort that all out based on kickoffs and a hundred different emails.... I

Also, I believe no reoccurring availability, so for every week of the season, confirm days of availability, not just on Saturday, though I hope I misunderstood this point...

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I have got to agree with the correspondents on this one - we have had players from last year (registered) not even get their My Comet emails so that they can register.

NZF needs a rocket for introducing a new system only a couple of months before the season starts - it makes me wonder at their capacity to plan, or to understand what goes on at grass roots level.  I am pretty annoyed (and I am being polite) as it appears that once again NZF have just acted without being aware of the consequences.

Also, a big question - why do the players have to go online and re-register each year.  That appears to me to be a total waste of time.

[quote=ol'sole]

I have got to agree with the correspondents on this one - we have had players from last year (registered) not even get their My Comet emails so that they can register.

NZF needs a rocket for introducing a new system only a couple of months before the season starts - it makes me wonder at their capacity to plan, or to understand what goes on at grass roots level.  I am pretty annoyed (and I am being polite) as it appears that once again NZF have just acted without being aware of the consequences.

Also, a big question - why do the players have to go online and re-register each year.  That appears to me to be a total waste of time.

[/quote When someone with Graemes experience complains. There is something wrong!!]

John from In the Back of the net wrote this on it

Note teh example from me about a guy being registered with the women's team is not a My Comet issue, he was on a list Wellington United loaded on to the system hence getting the email. The rest are true though

It's worrying when the head of Northern Football is saying “The timing of this has been outside the control of anyone in football” 

Cluster. As far as I can see you VUWAFC doesn't even appear on the list of clubs to register too.

It's a NZF project. Did anyone expect anything other than overwhelming incompetence?

We almost ended up entering one of our Cap Nine teams in the Chatham Cup this year - largely operator error but funny non the less

I'm gonna provide a bit of balance - and with the sidenote that we are using Clubhub as our primary registration tool so have been spared some of the pains of the transition from Sporting Pulse to Comet.

I can see a large upside with Comet - It's been a very poor transition project that is under no doubt but the program itself for me will outperform Sporting Pulse easily.

I suspect we won't be able to see past the issues however for about 12-18 months.

One of the downstream issues is sure to be player eligibility protests. With Mainland and Football South getting their South Island League underway for their top 5/3 teams after 2/1 rounds respectively (go figure), I hope it is smooth sailing. What could go wrong?

Parent here. 

No notification received, registration missed. Club relied on Comet to communicate registration details, naive. Many of last seasons kids not registered. Club not equipped to deal with problem.

Club numbers more than halved. 

Referee: I appear to have two numbers I guess from my surname changing back in 2012. Tried registering both and appears to have worked but can't get into the system now that I'm suppose to use to check my games, manage availability and get team cards. Did reset password and tried again. Tells me it's incorrect password after I just reset it. Sent email to referee organiser but haven't heard back yet. Hopefully sorted before games this weekend. 

I can't get in at all, and I don't have the name change problem..

Resetting the password also results in the new password being "incorrect" straight away for me too.

Weird, wonder if they have closed access to referees at the moment as I used to have it when trialing it for Petone Hilton. 

This all seems like basic stuff that should be tested before releasing nationwide. Or at least rolled it out to a pilot site to work out the problems first. 

this is up there with Novopay :)

Fudge no, Novapay was a massive cock up. Still pisses me off to this day that some things still aren't right. At least they haven't stuffed up one of my pay checks for six months now (fingers crossed)

I sent my rant (the first post in this thread) to about seven email addresses at NZF after I posted it here. Today I actually got a polite email back from the guy who is implementing Comet. Brave of him I thought.

What part of this makes it look like it isn't a massive cock up? ☺️

not commenting from a player reg perspective, but will be interesting to see how this weekend goes for central and cap prem games. I think cap football are as prepared as can be, and have fallbacks in place for those appointed as officials.

and the Phoenix payroll system.One billion CAD and counting.

Hmm, looks to me like the mobile app is working, but the website is not. 

Hmm you're right, I can login on the app. At least if I'm assigned a game this weekend I'll hopefully be able to view it and manage it. 

I had problems registering initially but it’s been fine since.

My main gripe is that once the teamsheet has been submitted, it’s quite a process to change it in the hour before kick off when referees have their stuff to do. Also I was watching a reserves game yesterday of which I was Assessor and could see the team sheets in the app but one team had 10 players and the other had 3 numbers on the field that were not in the app at all. The shirt number sent of was listed as a sub!!

I think that while it would have created more paper work, they should have run this new app alongside regular teamsheets. That would allow the office on a Monday/Tuesday to see the players on the teamsheet, see if it matched up with what’s in the database and then use that to iron out the wrinkles. Double handling for sure but it would have been a better roll out

So it looks like the Android app was updated 2 days ago, and have not been able to login since. Website works fine though :/

Hopefully sorted this week. Wasn't too bad to use for referees, just took a bit of time. Imagine will get faster at it as we get use to it. 

I had 15 mins of rain yesterday. Can't wait to replace my sodden ganecard with a smarTwitch app linked to comet to record match incidents.

Email in my box yesterday from Andy Martin justifying the Comet mess

a simple SORRY for ballsing this up would have been better

Re: "player clearances" as posted on Capital Football website.

I'm not involved in club admin etc so excuse my ignorance but...

- do(should) all Senior/Junior players who transfer from a club from the end 2017 season to a new club for 2018 appear on the above list ?

- If they're not on the list, how do players/clubs know they're ok to play or is their sometimes just an assumption they're "cleared" ?

Just curious as I've seen several senior players playing for different clubs to 2017 who aren't on the above list.

I'd guess far more juniors transfer than seniors so a lot of those wont appear either.

Wonder if player ID cards are far off?

comet has the ability to have photos l9aded against a player

yeah the 'transfer' system is a mess.

So did the old system. 

My understanding (as explained to me) is that a player can be de-registered in the system by their last club (when they leave) and then if/when they go to a new club they are then registered as a new player therefore no 'transfer' has occurred and is the reason why some players are not showing up in the transfer list. 

Well that will work well for the old club if they are still waiting on things like subs or gear to be returned.

Doesn’t work if the old club doesn’t bother de-registering players. 

I remember I went from Upper Hutt -> 4 different clubs -> Naenae. Naenae had trouble registering me. Turns out they couldn’t transfer me from Eastbourne because I wasn’t registered there (I had even played Chatham cup for them!), they ended up having to transfer me from Upper Hutt, my original club - none of my other clubs since bothered transferring me. 

I would have demanded a transfer fee to complete the release!