Rugby Club Subs and Match Fees: Collecting Them Without the Chase

The Rugby Money Model, Briefly

Community rugby runs on two kinds of income, and it helps to keep them separate in your head. The first is membership subs - an annual or seasonal payment that covers the cost of simply being a club. The second is match-day subs - a smaller per-game contribution that covers the cost of actually playing. Almost every community club in England charges both, and once you see why, setting your own numbers gets a lot easier.

Membership is where rugby clubs do something rather lovely. Many sell a family or whole-club membership - one payment that covers the children in minis and juniors, the adults in the senior and veterans sides, and access to the clubhouse and bar. It says, in effect, that this is one club from the under-6s to the third XV, and that a household belongs to all of it rather than buying separate slots. That is good for the family budget and even better for the club's sense of itself.

Match-day subs sit on top. These are the few pounds collected on the day of a game, and they exist because every fixture carries its own costs: a referee to pay, match balls that get kicked into hedges, and the post-match teas that are as much a part of rugby as the rucking. Charging both means the fixed cost of running the club is shared by everyone, while the players who turn out most often chip in a little more for the games they actually play.

Working Out What to Charge

The wrong way to set subs is to copy the club down the road. Their costs are not your costs. The right way is to add up what your club actually has to spend over a season, then divide it fairly across your membership. Sit down with last year's accounts and build the picture from the real numbers.

Add those up for the season, estimate your other income (bar takings, sponsorship, fundraising, Gift Aid), and the gap is what subs and match fees have to fill. Then divide it fairly: a full season's senior membership at one rate, juniors and minis at a lower one, a capped family rate so larger households are not penalised, and a modest match-day sub to cover the per-game costs. The arithmetic is dull, but doing it properly is the difference between a club that scrapes through and one that plans ahead.

Keep Nobody Priced Out

Rugby clubs pride themselves on inclusivity, and the subs structure is where that pride is tested. A seasonal membership of a couple of hundred pounds is nothing to one family and an impossible barrier to another. Three things keep the door open for everyone:

Family and sibling concessions. Cap the family membership so a household with three children playing pays far less than three full junior rates. The marginal cost of a third child at minis is tiny; price it that way.

Student and concession rates. The student home from university who wants a few games over Christmas, the retired veteran, the parent who volunteers every week - sensible reduced rates keep them all attached to the club rather than drifting away over a bill.

Instalments. The single biggest barrier to a big annual sub is paying it all at once. Splitting a season's membership into monthly payments turns an intimidating lump sum into something most households can absorb without a second thought. A quiet word and a payment plan keeps a child playing who might otherwise have quietly dropped out.

The Real Pain: Collecting It

Setting the fees is the easy half. Collecting them is where treasurers lose their weekends and their will to live. Picture the typical community club on a Saturday: minis at 9am, juniors mid-morning, two or three senior sides through the afternoon, every one of them owing a few pounds in match-day subs. The collection happens in cash, in a margarine tub, by a volunteer trying to coach at the same time. Somebody always forgot their wallet. The notebook of who-owes-what is illegible by Monday. Reconciling it against the bank is a fortnightly headache, and the season's accounts are a fog of "I think Dave paid in February".

It is no way to run money, and it is the reason good treasurers burn out. The fix is not to chase harder - it is to stop collecting cash at all. Move subs and match fees onto a digital system and three things change at once: members pay from their phone before they ever reach the touchline, the system sends the reminders so you do not have to, and every payment lands in a clean record that reconciles itself. Automated reminders alone transform collection, because the unpaid sub is almost never a refusal - it is simply someone who forgot, and a friendly automatic nudge fixes that without anyone feeling chased.

Where a Club Payment Tool Fits

This is the day-to-day job a club payments platform is built for, and it sits alongside your official records rather than replacing them. RFU GMS remains the Rugby Football Union's system for affiliation and player and club registration - the official record - and many clubs use Pitchero for their website and league pages. A tool like Teamo complements those by handling the money and the membership admin: collecting subs and match fees by Direct Debit, posting them to your accounts, and showing who has paid where the team is actually picked.

In the interest of being straight with you: Teamo is made by Sportplan Ltd, the same company behind this website. With that said, here is what it does for the treasurer's specific problem. On fees, at the time of writing, card payments run at 2.5% + 20p while Direct Debit is 2% + 20p - a lower percentage that makes Direct Debit the cheaper route for recurring membership and family subs, which is exactly what most rugby clubs collect. Its auto-pay bundling packages a member's subs, match fees and event payments into a single charge, so you pay the fixed 20p once rather than on every separate transaction. Unpaid balances show up as live payment status on the team sheet at selection - the no-pay-no-play view - which is how clubs collect the large majority of what they are owed, surfacing it at the point of selection rather than in an awkward chase. It does so privately: team managers see only a treasurer 'traffic-light' health indicator, never who individually owes what. And every payment posts automatically to Xero, so there is no margarine-tub reconciliation at all. If that sounds like your Saturday morning, you can see how Teamo handles club subs and match fees.

Whatever you choose, the principle holds: the right tool turns the treasurer's weekly chase into a process that runs itself, with instalments and concessions built in so the inclusivity that rugby cares about is baked into how you collect, not bolted on as an apology.

Putting It All Together

Get the money side right and everything else gets easier. Set your subs from your own real costs, charge a fair match-day sub on top, cap the family rate and offer concessions and instalments so nobody is priced out, then move the whole lot onto a digital system that reminds, collects and records for you. The treasurer gets their weekends back, the accounts stop being a mystery, and the club can plan a season instead of surviving one.

The money is only one part of running a community club, of course. For the wider picture, our guide to running a junior rugby team walks through a whole season from registration to the last fixture, and if your club is a registered charity or CASC, the Gift Aid for rugby clubs guide shows how to reclaim tax on subs and donations to ease the pressure on fees. When match-day subs are tied to who actually turns out, our team selection and availability guide helps you keep selection and payment in step. And when the admin is finally off your plate, browse the full Rugby drills library and put the evenings back into coaching.