Most community footy websites fail at the same point. The round gets moved to a different ground, the fixtures secretary updates a spreadsheet somewhere, and the club site still shows last month’s draw. Parents end up ringing the canteen to check, and the committee wears the confusion. Meanwhile the real, current data is sitting in PlayHQ the whole time, just not on the page anyone actually visits.
An AFL club website’s job is narrow and it is not glamorous. Tell people where and when the next game is, show the ladder without a fight, look like your club and not a template, and stay current without a volunteer burning a Sunday night on it. Get those four right and the rest is detail. Here is what that looks like in 2026, and where the usual DIY builds come unstuck.
Live fixtures, ladders and results without the copy-paste
Community AFL competitions run on PlayHQ. It holds every fixture, ladder, result and stat line for the leagues on it, and the free Play AFL app is where a lot of families now check the draw. The problem is the gap between that data and your own website. Officially embedding PlayHQ fixtures into a self-built WordPress site has been limited and inconsistent for years, which is why so many clubs fall back to screenshots or a manually retyped ladder that is wrong by Tuesday.
The fix is a website that reads from the source instead of asking a volunteer to. Fixtures, results and the ladder should pull straight from the platform your league runs on, update themselves after each round, and show correctly on a phone. No screenshots, no retyping, no stale draw. When the competition manager moves a game, your site moves with it. That single change removes the most common reason a footy site goes out of date, and it hands you back the volunteer hours that copy-paste was quietly eating.
Mobile first, because that is where your members actually are
Check your own analytics and the split is rarely close. Most people hitting a community club site are on a phone, standing in a kitchen or a car park, wanting one fact fast: next game, ground, time. A layout designed on a desktop and never tested small will bury that under a hero image and a welcome message nobody reads.
Front-load the practical stuff. Next fixture and ground up top, tap-to-map directions, ladder a scroll away, registration and contact a thumb-reach from anywhere. Buttons should be sized for a thumb, and text readable without pinching. The clubs that get this right are not running fancier tech, they have just decided what the page is for and put it where a phone finds it first.
On-brand design that looks like your club
Your guernsey, your colours and your history are the whole point, and a generic sport-site template flattens all of it. This is where the off-the-shelf builders leave clubs looking interchangeable: same stock hero, same layout, a logo dropped in the corner and called done.
On-brand means the site carries your actual identity. Correct club colours used properly, your crest at real resolution, team photos and matchday shots instead of stock imagery, and typography that holds together across every page. It should feel like walking into your own clubrooms, not a franchise. That consistency is also what makes sponsors comfortable putting their logo on it, because they can see it will be seen and it will look sharp doing it.
Sponsors, registration and the pages that pull their weight
A club website earns its keep in two currencies: money and time. Sponsors want a tidy, visible placement they can point their own customers to, which means a proper sponsors page and logos worked into the footer and fixture pages rather than crammed into one forgotten grid. Get this right and the site becomes a genuine part of your sponsorship pitch, not an afterthought you apologise for.
On the time side, registration is the page that saves the most committee hours when it works and costs the most when it does not. Community footy registration runs through PlayHQ, and GameDay handles the membership and payment side for a lot of clubs. Your website’s role is simply to send people to the right link fast, at the right time of year, without three dead pages from seasons past cluttering the path. Add the boring-but-essential pages, committee contacts, policies, ground details, canteen and volunteer info, and you have a site that answers questions before they reach someone’s phone.
A site your committee can keep current
The best-designed AFL club website is worthless if updating it depends on one person who is busy, moving on, or the only one who knows the password. Committees turn over. Skills walk out the door. Anything that relies on a single volunteer to hand-edit fixtures or wrestle a page builder will drift out of date the moment that person steps back.
Two things keep a site current. First, the live data does its own updating, so nobody touches the fixtures at all. Second, the handful of things that do change, a sponsor added, a policy updated, a news post, sit behind simple edits any committee member can make without breaking the layout. Better again is a build that is hosted and maintained for you, so the software stays patched and secure and the club can get on with running footy. That is the model we build toward: on-brand site, live fixtures and ladder pulled straight from the source, and the upkeep off your committee’s plate.
If your club site is a season or two behind and you would rather it just stayed current on its own, take a look at how we build club websites and book a look. No hard sell, just a walk through what a current, on-brand site would look like for your club.
FAQ
How do I add PlayHQ fixtures and ladders to my club website?
Community AFL fixtures, results and ladders live in PlayHQ, but officially embedding them into a self-built site has been limited and inconsistent, which is why many clubs resort to screenshots or manually retyped ladders. The reliable approach is a website built to read that data directly from the platform your league runs on, so fixtures and the ladder update themselves after each round with no copy-paste.
What does a good AFL club website actually need?
Four things carry most of the value: live fixtures, results and a ladder that stay current on their own; a mobile-first layout that puts the next game and ground up top; on-brand design using your real colours, crest and team photos; and a clear path to registration and sponsors. The rest is supporting detail.
Is a template site builder good enough for a footy club?
It can get you online, but the common trade-offs are a generic look that flattens your club identity, fixtures that need manual updating, and upkeep that falls on one volunteer. If you want the site to stay current without a weekly time cost and to actually look like your club, a purpose-built AFL club website is a better fit.
How is registration handled on an AFL club website?
Registration runs through PlayHQ, and many clubs use GameDay for the membership and payment side. Your website’s job is to point families to the correct registration link quickly during sign-up season, and to keep old seasons’ links from cluttering the path, not to replace those platforms.
Do we still need a website if we are active on the Play AFL app and social media?
Yes. The app and your socials are great for reach, but they are not yours and they are not searchable the way a website is. A club website is the one place you fully control, where sponsors get a permanent home, where new families land when they search your club, and where the season’s practical details stay put.