Applicable to: Competition Administrators

Applicable to: All organisations 

Applicable to: Rugby Canada

Application(s): Admin Portal > Competitions > [Competition] > Grades > [Grade] > Settings

This article will cover the following:

1. Understanding conferences in PlayHQ
2. What you'll need before starting
3. Enabling conferences and creating conference names for a grade
4. Assigning teams to a conference
5. Viewing ladders by conference
6. Managing conferences (editing, deleting, disabling)

Related articles:

• Managing grades
• Managing teams
• Allocating players and team staff to teams

Overview

Conferences allow you to organise teams within a grade into separate competitive groups — for example, an Eastern Conference and a Western Conference within the same grade. Teams can still play across conferences during the regular season, but ladder standings are displayed separately for each conference.

Conferences are useful for large competitions with regional or divisional structures where you want to maintain visibility of conference-specific standings while still allowing cross-conference play.

What you'll need before starting

Required information

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• A competition with at least one grade created
• The list of conference names you want to use (e.g. "Eastern", "Western", "North", "South") — minimum of 2 required
• The list of teams in the grade and which conference each should be assigned to
• Confirmation that the competition is a regular season (not tournament) type

Limitations

Important limitations to understand if Conferences are right for your competition: 

• Conferences add group teams and filter ladders, but they are not considered by fixture generation, fixture upload templates, or Advanced Fixturing. 
• Fixture coordinators must manually ensure appropriate conference matchups. 
• Conferences are not considered in finals fixturing, therefore, a manual finals build is recommended.
• Conferences are not available for tournament-type competitions as pools are available instead.
• Conferences can only be enabled on grades within a regular season competition. 
• Conferences will be removed when the fixture upload or regrading features are used, and will need to be reassigned after using these tools. 

Enabling conferences and creating conference names for a grade

⚠️ Important: Enable conferences before assigning teams where possible

Conferences can be enabled at any point, but it is easier to enable them before teams have played any games. Once teams have games recorded, ladder standings will only reflect conference structure from the point conferences are enabled.

Follow these steps to enable conferences on a grade:

1. Navigate to the grade's settings

Open the Admin Portal, then go to Competitions > select the relevant Competition > Grades > select the Grade > Settings.

2. Toggle on Enable Conferences

Locate the Conferences toggle and switch it to ON. A Conference Name option will appear.

3. Add your conferences

Click Add Conference, enter the conference name (e.g. "Eastern Conference"), and save. Repeat to add at least one more conference — a minimum of 2 conferences is required for the toggle to be saved.

4. Save grade settings

Click Save to confirm your changes. Conferences are now available for team assignment within this grade.

Once saved, you can assign teams to conferences from the team management screen.

Assigning teams to a conference

Assigning teams to a conference depends on when the setting is enabled. Its important to note that the following applies to all types of team creations, whether its created by the comp administrator, via a team-to-season registration, or via the clubs adding in their own teams.

Teams added to grades AFTER the conference setting is enabled:

Upon allocating teams to the grades, the competition administrator will need to select the conference in the allocation modal: 

Follow these steps to assign a team to a conference in the allocation modal:

1. Click to assign teams to a grade

2. Within the modal, select the conference, before adding the team

Teams added to grades BEFORE the conference setting is enabled:

Teams added in a grade prior to the enablement of conferences must be done manually by a Competition Administrator after the team exists.

Follow these steps to assign a team to a conference:

1. Navigate to the Grade you want to update
2. Expand the grade chevron / drop-down
3. Select a conference from the Conference dropdown

Locate the Conference field and select the appropriate conference from the dropdown. To remove a team's conference assignment, select No conference.

4. Save changes

Click Save to apply the conference assignment. The conference badge will now display on the team's tile and across fixtures and ladders.

Viewing ladders/tables by conference

When conferences are enabled, the Ladder/table view displays a separate ladder table for each conference, stacked vertically. Each ladder shows only teams assigned to that conference.

To view the combined ladder (all teams across all conferences), use the Overall Ladder toggle at the top of the ladder view.

Teams in a conference-enabled grade that have not been assigned a conference will be excluded from ladders/tables — assign all teams to a conference to ensure complete standings.

Managing conferences

This section covers common changes and issues after conferences have been set up.

Editing a conference name

Conference names can be edited at any time. Go to Grade Settings > Manage Conferences, click the conference name, update it, and save. All teams currently assigned to that conference will reflect the new name immediately.

Deleting a conference

You can delete a conference whilst teams are still assigned to it but these teams will not be assigned to a conference afterwards. 

When deleting conferences, submitting team reassignments first, work through the list systematically:

1. Open the team list filtered by the conference you intend to delete
2. Edit each team and assign a new conference (or No conference)
3. Once no teams remain in the conference, return to Manage Conferences and delete it

Disabling conferences for a grade

⚠️ Important: Disabling conferences will permanently remove all conference assignments from teams in this grade. This action cannot be undone — you will need to manually reassign teams if you re-enable conferences later.

Go to Grade Settings, toggle Enable Conferences to OFF. All team-conference relationships in the grade will be removed.

Regrading teams in a conference-enabled grade

⚠️ Important: Regrading a team removes its conference assignment.

• When a team is regraded out of a grade, its conference assignment is removed.
• When a team is regraded into a grade with conferences enabled, it will be placed into the first conference by default. Update the team's conference manually if needed.

After any regrade, review the affected teams and reassign conferences as required.

Fixture Upload involving a conference-enabled grade

⚠️ Important: Using fixture upload will remove a team’s conference assignment.

• If fixturing via fixture upload tool, enable the conferences after the fixture is created

Frequently asked questions

Who can enable conferences and assign teams to them? Host organisation administrators of a competition can enable conferences at the grade level, create conference names, and assign teams. Club Administrators can view conference assignments for their teams but cannot edit them.

Are conferences available for tournament competitions? No. Conferences are only available for regular season competition types. The Enable Conferences toggle will not appear in grade settings for tournaments.

Can clubs select a conference when creating a team? Yes. Clubs can pre-select a conference during team creation, however, all conference assignments can be edited/confirmed by a Competition Administrator.

Will conferences be considered when fixtures are generated? No. Fixture generation, fixture upload templates, and Advanced Fixturing do not use conference data. You will need to manually ensure appropriate cross-conference or intra-conference matchups when building fixtures. If fixturing via fixture upload tool, enable the conferences after the fixture is created.

What happens to conference assignments when I regrade a team? The conference assignment is removed when a team is regraded out of a grade. If the team is regraded into a grade with conferences enabled, it is placed in no conference by default — update it manually if needed.

What is the minimum and maximum number of conferences per grade? You must create a minimum of 2 conferences when the Enable Conferences toggle is on. There is no hard maximum, but we recommend 2–4 for usability.

What if a team isn't assigned to a conference in a conference-enabled grade? The team will be excluded from appearing on ladders. Assign all teams to a conference for complete standings.