For independent academies
The record a child leaves with
Pitchward is a development and safeguarding record for independent youth football academies. Coaches write down how a child is really doing in about a minute. Parents see their own child, and hold the consent. And when a player moves on, the record goes with them.
From £39 a month. No contract. Built in Kent by one person who answers his own emails.
Where the record lives now
A spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, three coaches' phones.
When a coach leaves, what they knew about your players leaves with them. There is no handover, because there is nothing to hand over.
You are a data controller. Nobody told you.
If you hold children’s names, dates of birth, medical notes or photos, UK GDPR applies to you. Being volunteers does not change it. Most academies have no consent record they could produce if asked.
A released player leaves with nothing.
Two or three years of their life, and they walk away with no record of what they were good at or what they had worked on. Everything anyone learned about them stays behind.
01
A four corner record, in about a minute
Jot down rough notes after a session. Draft with AI turns them into a four corner review you can correct. Technical, physical, psychological and social, weighted equally, the way the FA model actually intends.
The effect is not paperwork. It is that a coach who would otherwise only note whether a child can strike a ball gets prompted, every few weeks, to think about whether that child seems withdrawn or isolated. It will not diagnose anything. It does put a pattern in front of the adult who sees the child every week.
02
Parents see their own child, and nothing else
Every parent gets their own way in. They see what you choose to share, they can message the coach, and they hold the consent behind their child's photos, footage and medical information. They can withdraw it whenever they like.
That last part is not a feature you have to sell to parents. It is the reason they trust you with the rest.
03
Safeguarding as the default, not a setting
- Every coach to parent message is logged.
- There is no route for a coach to message a child directly. Not a setting, no route.
- Staff clearances sit on a register that tells you before one runs out.
- Any footage that leaves the academy has faces blurred automatically.
- Anything involving a child’s image is gated on recorded parental consent.
You do not have to find these and switch them on. They are how it works.
04
The Player Passport
The child's record belongs to the child. If they move to another club, the record can move with them, with the family's approval, and it only carries the parts the family agreed to share. If they stop playing altogether, the family still has it.
What you should know before you sign up
Pitchward is early, and it is one person. That is a real risk and you should weigh it.
Here is what I do about it. Your data is exportable at any time, in full, in formats you own. It is held on servers in the EU. Nothing about a child is sold, and there is no advertising and no third party analytics on a child's record. There is a written data processing agreement, and you can have it before you enter a single player.
If that is not enough for you yet, that is a reasonable position and I would rather you told me why.
Pricing
Three tiers, per academy, not per coach
Starter
£39per month
A single age group getting started
Club
£79per month
A full academy running several squads
Academy
£149per month
Larger academies with multiple sites
Parents can add Pathway Family for £5 a month if they want their child's passport and history kept independently of the academy. It is a flat price per family, so every sibling is included. That is the parent's choice, never yours, and nothing in the academy's own record depends on it.
Put one squad on it this season
Not the whole academy. One age group, one coach, one season. If it has not earned its place by Christmas, leave. I would rather hear why it did not work than have you paying for something you do not open.
Or reply to the email. It comes to me, not a support queue.