It was only meant to fix Thursdays

Bev has asked me about six times to write this so here it is. Short version: I tried to fix one evening of tennis and it got out of hand.

"Anyone fancy social tennis Thursday 7pm? Courts 3 and 4. First 8 to reply."

That message, or one like it, went out every week at our club for years. And then the noticeboard. Look at the noticeboard.

After Covid our socials went mad. Five a week at one point, six courts, twenty-odd people a night, total beginners and people who'd been playing together since the nineties all in the same session. And one person running the lot, out of pure love for the club, on a secret Excel spreadsheet with some bits of script bolted on that broke if you looked at it.

They'd post the pairings as a screenshot. Half the group wouldn't see it. Same pair together three rounds running. A strong player stuck with two complete beginners all night. Nobody's fault. Doing fair doubles rotations across six courts in your head is genuinely hard, I don't think people realise how hard. Someone tried ChatGPT and it put the same bloke on two courts at once.

I build software for a living so I thought, I'll just do the pairings bit. One weekend. Type in names, press a button, get courts. That's all it was supposed to be. Fix Thursdays.

The organiser loved it. People said the games felt fairer. Then someone asked if it could do a reserve list. Then ratings. Then ladders (Dan has thoughts). Then knockouts. Then someone at the padel end asked if it worked for padel, and it did, because if you're moving people round courts the sport barely matters.

That's how you end up with an app called Rallio that's on phones and has other clubs on it. I didn't plan that. I wanted Thursdays to work.

The one thing I didn't expect and still think about: nobody minded much being paired with someone better or worse than them. What they HATED was playing the same person twice. Against you in round one, with you in round three. That annoyed people far more than ability ever did. So that's what the thing ended up being best at. Not repeating.

Also nobody wants to sign up for anything. Ever. So now it's just a link in the WhatsApp. You tap it, you see your court. That's it.

Thursdays work now. The organiser still runs them, they just don't need the spreadsheet. The noticeboard is still a crime scene. One thing at a time.

P.S. Bev would like it on record that she "thought of half of this". Fair.