Your matches stay on your phone

What the app stores, and where

Everything is saved in the app’s own storage on your device:

• Matches — the teams, the code and rules, the venue and competition if you add them, and everything you log during the match: scores, wides, cards and substitutions, with their times and jersey numbers.
• Squads — the players’ names and jersey numbers you enter, how you’ve chosen their names to appear, and who was on each match’s team sheet.
• Your club — its name, and its county if you picked it from the list.
• A few settings — last match’s set-up so next week’s is quicker, which match is in progress, and when you last made a backup file.

None of it is transmitted anywhere. The app makes no network requests at all, which is also why a whole match can be tracked in airplane mode at a pitch with no signal.

The list of clubs you choose from comes built into the app, from Sport Ireland’s open data. Searching it happens on your phone and sends nothing.

Backup files, and anything you share

You can make a backup file of your season, share a single match as a file, or share a match’s timeline as text. You choose where each one goes — Files, AirDrop, email or anywhere else your phone offers — and the app never sends them anywhere by itself.

A backup file includes your squads, so it includes your players’ names. Once you send it somewhere, it is looked after by whoever or whatever you sent it to. Treat a file holding a juvenile panel the way you would treat the team sheet itself.

If you back your phone up to iCloud or a computer, that backup includes the app’s data too. That’s handled by Apple, under Apple’s own privacy policy.

What the app does not do

• No account, sign-up or login.
• No analytics, crash reporting or usage measurement built into the app.
• No advertising, and no advertising identifiers.
• No tracking, and nothing shared with any third party.
• No location data, and no access to your contacts.
• No photographs. The app has no way to add a picture of anyone.

If you have chosen in your iPhone’s settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may pass on reports of the app crashing. That is a choice Apple offers and you make; the app adds nothing to it.

Players and children

Sideline Stats is a tool for the adults who run a team: coaches, mentors and club PROs. It is not directed at children. A juvenile squad is still a list of children, though, so the app is built around that:

• Players’ names stay on your phone and leave it only in a file you choose to share.
• Every event is recorded against a jersey number, not a name. A name is only looked up when it is shown, so correcting a name corrects every match.
• You choose how names appear — full name, surname, initials or number only — and for a juvenile squad the app asks before saving rather than assuming.
• You don’t need names at all. A match tracked with numbers only works exactly the same.

If your club has a policy on keeping players’ details, it applies to what you enter on your phone too.

Your information, and your control over it

Because nothing is collected, we hold nothing about you or your players to request a copy of, correct or delete. It’s all on your phone, under your control: correct or shorten a name in the squad at any time, or forget a player entirely. Forgetting a player removes their name from the squad and from every match, which then shows only the number they wore; the scores themselves don’t change, and it can’t be undone. Deleting the app deletes everything the app has stored. Backup files you have made are separate copies, so a forgotten name stays in any made earlier until you delete them wherever you saved or sent them.

Changes to this policy

If a future version of the app sends anything off the device, this page will say so before that version is released, and the app’s App Store privacy details will be updated to match.

Getting in touch

privacy@sideline.community

Last updated 14 September 2026.