That is how Dunedin club cricket stalwart Tony Buchanan responds when asked about the rollout of PlayHQ.
Buchanan is the secretary and treasurer at the Albion Cricket Club and the manager of the Eagles — the club’s premier grade side.
Without people like him beavering away in the background and plugging up the leaks, people would just flow away from the game.
Buchanan’s exasperation should set off alarm bells at the headquarters of New Zealand Cricket.
It made the decision to ditch scoring platform CricHQ and thrust PlayHQ — an operating system so green it has left a bitter taste in the mouths of countless volunteers if social media feedback is any gauge — on the community.
Buchanan certainly counts himself among the disenfranchised.
He tried to embrace the new system and work with it. But he quickly became frustrated at how poorly it had been put together.
"Leading up to the start of the season, I thought, this isn’t too bad," Buchanan said.
"It is actually quite good to use to score a game ... but there are some definite holes."
The list of missing features for that opening weekend was quite staggering. The problems ranged from niggly to critical.
Incredibly, the platform did not include extras, so the scoreboard did not add up. That problem was quickly fixed, but that would be like selling someone an ice cream, plonking it in their hands and asking them to come back next week for the cone.
PlayHQ still does not report the result — that is left to the viewer to determine. It is mostly obvious but not always.
A Duckworth-Lewis-Stern calculator was not there, and there was no fall of wickets initially either.
That was added but still does not include the over the batter was dismissed.
A major fault that persists is that if a player is not registered, they have to be entered as "Fill-In", rendering the scoreboard meaningless.
There is currently no statistical database, so you cannot look up and see how many wickets/runs player X has taken/scored.
If you are using the system offline, it is a disaster waiting to happen.
Buchanan found that out the hard way more than once.
"I’ve worked this out myself. If you end the game and you are offline, the game disappears."
Most of Albion’s games are scored offline and a lot of work got lost before he came up with his own workaround.
"I’ve been sitting there at the club on a Saturday night looking at a game which just does not exist any more.
"Initially I didn’t realise what the problem was and PlayHQ weren’t able to answer me."
The solution was not to enter the action which ended the game and wait until he got back online before he did.
Of course, that would have been good to know at the start of the season.
"My overall feeling is it was rushed out before it was properly tested. I’ve spoken to a few people who supposedly know about software and they say it will be OK in the end.
"But it should have been sorted before it came out."
New Zealand Cricket’s response to the wave of criticism has basically been to duck for cover. In a statement in November, it acknowledged “challenges and problems” with PlayHQ.
"We’re well aware that, across the country, hard-working volunteers of the community game ... have been faced with challenges and problems connected to the new platform.
“Rest assured we’re listening to the issues you’re highlighting and wasting no time in feeding these back to the administrators of PlayHQ.”
The Otago Daily Times had a few follow-up questions.
Why was the decision made to switch platforms?
Did NZC engage properly with community cricket about the change?
Was the product properly tested before it was launched?
What training was provided?
What is being done to address its flaws?
Did you engage with CricHQ before making the decision to change over?
Have the associations been paid an incentive fee to switch to PlayHQ?
Here is the entire response from a spokesman at the organisation.
"Kia ora Adrian — sorry, but we won’t be putting anyone up for an interview for this. We’ve already been interviewed a few times on the topic and have said everything we want to say. The information is in the public domain."
Ask yourself whether that response honours all the volunteers who give up their time every Saturday in summer to support the game.
CricHQ major shareholder Peter Dowell was able to offer more insight. It was his platform which was, in his words, "dumped like Martin Guptill" for PlayHQ.
Clearly, Dowell has a vested interest in the topic. But he raised some interesting points about the change.
"I think the issues with the systems have been pretty well highlighted in social media and other articles," Dowell said.
"I don’t think PlayHQ expected the complexity of cricket scoring when they undertook to deliver this at the start of the season. I don’t think there was any testing of it within the community, and the feedback we’ve had is that it was instigated far too quickly."
Dowell got involved with CricHQ in 2018 when he joined a group of investors which bought the company out of receivership to "give it a second innings".
"NZC were very happy and supportive to us at the start ... because it meant there wasn’t change within the community because it had become ingrained.
"We built up the user base and fan engagement across the platform from 260,000 [in 2018] to 500,000.
"Every player had on average five to seven followers and people could watch games live which was a super powerful engagement tool.
"But by going with PlayHQ, NZC has focused on an administration tool which serves literally 1% of those 500,000 people."
That complaint has surfaced plenty. PlayHQ is viewed by many as a good administration tool, but an inadequate scoring and social platform.
Dowell was disappointed with the lack of communication forthcoming from NZC. CricHQ had been working towards a new service agreement with NZC but felt the selectors’ axe instead.
"We understand you have to have a good administration tool, but you also have to understand the user and, if you are looking at social media, you’ll understand the ongoing issues."
Dowell said a lot of people were returning to CricHQ — which is free to use — and that was dividing the community game.
"That is a problem if you are trying to follow the game and find out who the next Kane Williamson is."
PlayHQ founder Sam Walch did not respond to an email from the Otago Daily Times, but has previously expressed surprise about the negative feedback.
“I’m concerned people would say we are not ready: it’s not how we feel," he told Stuff in mid-November.
“We listen to people, we are tuned into customer feedback and there is a backlog of things we are doing.
"But we don’t feel it’s a disaster. Games are getting scored, games are getting played, and people are registering.
"The community game is still working and functioning well."
Not everyone is grumpy with the rollout.
Green Island premier grade manager Ian Mockford gave a more balanced assessment of the platform.
He thought people would become accustomed to it, and it was good when it worked well.
It is worth noting Green Island uses NV Play to score their premier games, so it is not as impacted by the change.
NV Play is the scoring system used by NZC.
Former Volts and Sparks coach Nathan King accepted PlayHQ had its flaws, but thought the rollout had been managed well. King, who is now a teacher at Otago Boys’ and coaches the First XI, said people had ample opportunity to come to grips with the new technology.
"Clubs and schools have had numerous opportunities to be educated," he said, adding the Otago Cricket Association had gone the extra mile to help with the switch.
"In my humble opinion, it’s their own fault if they [are struggling] because they have been given all the opportunities that they needed."
As for the product itself, King accepted there were issues around having to register for each individual tournament.
The electronic scorecard was still missing some crucial elements and there was nowhere to view season statistics.
But he said the platform was continuing to be improved and he was confident some of the elements would be added "hopefully sooner rather than later".
Buchanan’s view on the training differs substantially from King’s point of view.
"They had lots of Zoom conferences, and on the surface that looked great," Buchanan said.
"But I went on a number of them and the problem was the people that were leading them were talking as though we knew quite a bit already and it was more like a refresher course."
People got frustrated with the training and gave up because it was "proving useless", he said.
"NZC rushed this in for reasons I don’t know. I wanted to work with it because it is what it is, but my overall view is negative."
