Rugby kick at sunset
Case Study

RollestonRugby Club

A Digital Home for Community Rugby

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The Client

New Zealand's fastest-growing community rugby club. 500+ registered players across 30+ teams, with grades spanning 5-year-olds in Rippa Rugby through to senior men's and women's teams. Entirely volunteer-run.

The Brief

The club needed more than a website. They needed a digital hub to replace scattered Facebook posts, group texts, word-of-mouth updates, and photocopied forms. All in one place that any committee volunteer could manage without technical knowledge.

Club Growth
19995 teams
2012Senior XV
2020Foster Park
Today30+ teams

A club that outgrew its tools. And needed a platform to match.

The Platform

Everything at a Glance

A custom admin dashboard built for volunteers. Not developers. Every feature accessible, every action one click away.

RRFC Admin Dashboard
Feature Deep Dive

Built for Real Problems

Every feature was designed for the actual person using it: a parent volunteer with a phone in one hand and a coffee in the other, trying to keep 274 families informed.

01

Events

Keeping Families in the Loop
The Problem

With 274 families across 30+ teams, important dates were getting lost in Facebook feeds and group chats. Parents would show up to training on the wrong night.

What We Built

Events appear automatically with date, time, and location at a glance. The information a parent needs while driving between activities. Schedule the full season calendar in one sitting.

Junior preseason, tackle clinics, rugby post installation days, season opening, prize giving. The rhythm of a rugby club's year.

02

Ground Status

The Saturday Morning Question
The Problem

"Are the grounds open?". The question every rugby parent asks on Saturday morning after rain. Previously answered by text message chains that were slow, inconsistent, and sometimes contradictory.

What We Built

One-click status update with three states: Open (green), Closed (red), TBC (amber). A beautiful interactive SVG rugby field that changes colour. It makes volunteers smile when they update it.

One volunteer, one click, 274 families informed. No phone trees, no conflicting messages.

03

Alert System

Urgent Communication That Can't Be Missed
The Problem

When grounds flood overnight and Saturday's games are cancelled, every family needs to know before they load kids into the car at 7am. A Facebook post isn't enough.

What We Built

Multi-type alerts with four severity levels appear as animated floating banners on every page. Schedule alerts to appear Friday evening and disappear Saturday night automatically.

Dismissable or persistent. Link directly to content. Time-scheduled. Impossible to miss.

04

News & Announcements

The Club's Voice
The Problem

Registration deadlines, coaching vacancies, payment reminders. Buried in social media timelines. By the time parents saw them, deadlines had passed.

What We Built

Full publishing platform with rich text editor. Write articles with headings, bullet points, links, and images. Schedule to publish at the perfect moment. SEO built in so articles look good when shared.

"2026 Registration Now Open", "Coaches Needed", "Have You Paid Your Subs?". Practical, community-focused content.

05

Photo Galleries

Preserving Club Moments
The Problem

Match day photos, team photos, club event snaps. All lived on individual phones or buried in Facebook albums. No permanent record of the club's visual history.

What We Built

Batch upload multiple photos at once. Every image automatically resized and converted to WebP with thumbnails generated. Drag-and-drop ordering. Full-screen lightbox with keyboard navigation.

Gallery pages load fast even on mobile connections at the rugby grounds.

06

Committee Management

The People Behind the Club
The Problem

Committee members change every year. The "Who's who" was always out of date. New families didn't know who to contact.

What We Built

Drag-and-drop committee page with photos, roles, and contact details. When a new Vice President is elected at the AGM, the website reflects it before the meeting ends.

From President through to Club Captain. Each person has a professional card with photo and role.

07

Sponsor Management

Honouring Those Who Fund Community Sport
The Problem

Sponsor logos were static images requiring HTML knowledge to update. Sponsors were grouped loosely and couldn't see their own placement.

What We Built

Tiered sponsor system. Gold, Silver, Bronze, Field Flag. Each with logo, link, and drag-and-drop ordering. Show prospective sponsors exactly what visibility each tier provides.

Recruit new sponsors by simply sharing a link to the sponsorship page.

08

Registration Guide

Making the Confusing Simple
The Problem

NZ Rugby uses the Rugby Xplorer app for registration. It's not intuitive. The club fielded "how do I register?" questions dozens of times each season.

What We Built

Step-by-step guide with three phases: Download → Create Account → Register. Grade breakdown for every level. App store links. Embedded tutorials. Interactive FAQ.

This page alone probably saves the club secretary hours of repeated email responses each season.

09

Contact & Messages

A Proper Front Door
The Problem

Enquiries came in ad hoc. Venue bookings mixed with registration questions mixed with sponsorship proposals. Nothing was tracked. Things fell through the cracks.

What We Built

Public contact form with categorised subjects feeds into an admin inbox. Messages show read/unread status. Reply directly via email with one click. Spam protection without CAPTCHAs.

Honeypot field catches bots silently. No friction for real people.

10

Self-Hosted Analytics

Know Your Audience Without Selling Their Data
The Problem

The club wanted to know if anyone was visiting the site, but Google Analytics meant cookie banners, GDPR complexity, and handing data to Google.

What We Built

Privacy-first analytics tracking visitors, devices, browsers, referrers, and top pages. Admin dashboard shows today's visitors and 7-day trends at a glance.

Zero cookies. Zero third-party scripts. Zero privacy concerns.

Rolleston RFC Homepage

Plus Everything Else a Club Needs

Documents & Resources

Club policies, registration forms, coaching resources. Organised and downloadable.

Rugby Hub

Player pathway from Rippa to Senior, coaching philosophy, code of conduct.

About & History

Club heritage, notable players, core values. Giving new families a sense of belonging.

Storage Management

Real-time visibility into storage usage. Every image auto-optimised to WebP.

Activity Logging

Who changed what and when. Coordination, not blame, for volunteer teams.

User Roles

Super Admin, Admin, Editor. Delegate access without risk.

Club Shop

Get Your Gear

Official merchandise page. Rep the blue and gold on and off the field.

RRFC Merchandise Store
Privacy & Security

Your Data Stays Yours

No third-party tracking. No data sold to advertisers. Community clubs handle sensitive information. contact details, admin credentials, member data. We built security in from day one.

⬡AES-256 EncryptionAll sensitive data encrypted at rest
◇Zero TrackingSelf-hosted analytics, no cookies
○Secure Authenticationbcrypt hashing, rate-limited login
△CSRF ProtectionEvery form secured against attacks

Running a Sports Club?

If your club is drowning in Facebook posts, group texts, and "did you get the email?". there's a better way. We build platforms that work the way clubs actually operate.

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