Five-a-Side Football Blog
Practical guides for running your weekly kickabout — plus the engineering story behind Capo.
Five-a-Side
What Happens When You Track Casual Football Like the Premier League
15 years. 718 matches. 4,959 goals. What the data from one obsessively tracked weekly kickabout reveals about amateur football, ageing, and why men never stop.
The Complete Guide to Organising a Weekly Five-a-Side
Everything you need to organise a weekly five-a-side — from finding players and booking a pitch to managing RSVPs, collecting money and picking fair teams.
How to Deal with Five-a-Side No-Shows (The Organiser’s Survival Guide)
Practical strategies for handling five-a-side dropouts and no-shows — from waitlists and deadlines to pre-payment and attendance tracking.
Why WhatsApp Groups Are Terrible for Organising Football
WhatsApp is great for banter but terrible for running a five-a-side. Here is why your group chat is making the organiser’s life harder — and what to use instead.
How to Pick Fair Teams for Five-a-Side (Without the Arguments)
Practical methods for balancing five-a-side teams fairly — from captains picking to stats-based balancing and AI team generators.
Best Apps for Organising Five-a-Side Football in 2026
Honest comparison of the best five-a-side organiser apps in 2026 — from Capo and Spond to WhatsApp and spreadsheets. Find the right tool for your weekly kickabout.
How to Keep Your Five-a-Side Going When Numbers Start Dropping
Your five-a-side attendance is dropping and the game feels like it is dying. Here is how to bring it back — from tracking stats and growing your squad to fixing the admin bottleneck.
How to Track Stats for Your Five-a-Side League
Turn your weekly kickabout into a proper league with stats, points and tables. Here is what to track, how to set up a points system and why it changes everything.
How to Collect Money for Five-a-Side Without Losing Mates
Practical guide to collecting match fees for five-a-side — from cash and bank transfers to in-app payments. Stop being a debt collector.
Who’s the Best Five-a-Side Player? (It’s Not Who You Think)
Every five-a-side group has the same cast of characters — the goal hanger, the bruiser, the moaner. After 15 years of organising, here’s what actually determines who’s best.
How to Manage Your Five-a-Side Squad (Without It Becoming a Full-Time Job)
Most five-a-side groups have core players, regulars, and last-minute fillers. Here’s how to manage tiers, handle dropouts, and stop the admin from taking over your week.
The Best Spond Alternative for Casual Football in 2026
Spond is built for clubs. Capo is built for mates’ football. An honest look at which app fits a casual 5-a-side group — and how to choose between them.
Building Capo
9-Part Series
Building a Production SaaS Without Writing Code
The engineering decisions behind a 125,000-line platform built entirely with AI. Real problems, real solutions, real lessons.
View seriesThe Moral Work of Friction
The high cost of getting exactly what you want
What happens when the distance between wanting something and getting it disappears - and what that does to the way you treat other people.
How I Actually Vibe Code (Why Prompting Is the Smallest Part)
Why judgment and specs matter more than prompts when building with AI—and where the real work happens.
Specs Are the Real Skill Behind AI Coding
Why 45,000 lines of specifications matter more than prompts when building with AI.
Why I Turned Off PostgreSQL Row-Level Security in Production
How connection pooling broke the RLS policies and what I built instead.
Retrofitting Multi-Tenancy Into a Live App
Adding tenant_id to 33 tables and 70+ API routes without breaking production.
Why I Made the Database Crash Loudly
How fail-fast patterns prevent silent cross-tenant data leaks.
Race Conditions in Booking Systems (and How I Fixed Them)
What happens when five players click Book for the last spot at the same time.
I Replaced 11 Serverless Functions With One Worker
From 45-second blocking requests to instant responses with background processing.
How Small Performance Fixes Add Up to 85% Faster
Why 300+ duplicate requests became 30, and what that did to load times.
How I Used a Genetic Algorithm to Balance Teams
The hardest feature to build with AI, and the 15 iterations it took to get right.
How I Built a SaaS Demo Without Touching the Database
Why static JSON exports beat live tenant switching for demo modes.