A play creation tool built for coaches

What a play creation tool should do for a coach

A play you explain at the whiteboard lasts as long as the whiteboard does. A play you draw in a notebook is a picture of one moment, and a set piece is six players moving at different times. A play creation tool is worth using only if it does three things better than the pen: it lets you draw the play quickly, it shows the play moving, and it gets the play in front of your players without asking them to install anything.

Playmaker is built around those three jobs. It opens in the browser on a blank pitch or court, so there is no download and no sign-up form between you and the first play. Every sport has its own surface, drawn to that game's real measurements, so a run to the edge of the box or a cut to the elbow is the distance it is on game day.

Draw the play

• Place your players. Tap the pitch to add a player, or start from a ready-made formation and move the two or three players your team does differently. Every player is numbered for you, and you can label any marker with a position or a name.
• Draw the runs. Drag from a player and the path you draw becomes that player's run, timed across the play. An overlap is two drags.
• Add the passes and the finish. Tap the receiver and the ball travels to wherever that player is at that moment, so a pass into space draws itself correctly. Mark the shot and the ball goes in at the end.
• Draw the opposition. A second team sits on the same diagram, so you can show the press you expect to face or the defence you want to beat.

Watch it move

Press play and the whole play runs from the first step to the finish: every run, every pass and the shot, at the speed you choose. This is the part a static diagram cannot do. You can see whether the runner clears the space before the ball arrives, and so can your players. Change a run, press play again, and the animation updates.

Share it as a link

Every play has its own link. Drop it in the team chat and a player opens it on a phone, presses play and watches the move. They do not need an account or an app. The link works for an assistant coach, a parent and a player who missed training, and it is free without limit.

On a free account you can do more with that link. Save a play, record up to 30 seconds of your own voice over it as it moves, and whoever opens the link hears you explain it. Put plays in a playbook and send one link for the whole playbook. Each player can press Learn your job, tap where they think their run finishes, and then watch the play show them whether they were right.

Print it and build a playbook

Not every coach wants the play on a phone. Export a play as an image, print it as a play card for the match-day folder, or print a whole playbook as a booklet with a code on the cover that opens the plays moving on any phone. The free tools on this site print the rest of match day: a play wristband, a match-day call sheet, a practice plan and a fair playing time rotation.

One tool for every sport you coach

Plenty of coaches run two teams, and a PE department runs all of them. The same play creation tool draws soccer, basketball, American football, rugby, field hockey, baseball, netball and volleyball, and there are pages of their own for flag football and youth soccer at 7v7 and 9v9. Each sport page shows its formations and set pieces, and every one of those play templates opens straight into the designer, ready to change.

What is free, and what is not

Drawing, animating and sharing plays is free, with no limit on how many plays you create. A free account keeps three saved plays and your playbooks. Pro adds unlimited saved plays, exports with no watermark and in your team's colours and crest, and position cards for every player. You never need Pro to draw a play and send it to your team. See pricing for the whole list, or read our honest comparisons with the other play designers coaches use.