The Rugby Football Union’s player registration system is causing “chaos” among community clubs, with the new online platform crashing on Tuesday night as the sport’s grassroots gear up for the return of their league season.

The RFU has this summer rolled out its new Game Management System (GMS), from the men’s Premiership down to the eighth tier and from Premiership Women’s Rugby down to the fourth tier, in order “to digitise the process, moving responsibility away from volunteers to individual players who will now register themselves online to play with a club”.

Previously, players would be registered to their clubs, who would then pass on their registration details to the RFU, a process which will still apply at level nine and below in the men’s game and level five and below in the women’s game.

But with men’s clubs above the ninth tier in a race against time to ensure that all their players are registered for the opening league match of the season on Saturday, Telegraph Sport has been contacted by several grass-roots teams around the country who have spoken of the “chaos” surrounding the RFU’s new platform.

Long-standing players who have completed the process have been left in limbo, awaiting approval from the RFU with the clock ticking ahead of the start of the new season with no explanation as to why they have not been approved.

In correspondence seen by Telegraph Sport, a customer service agent working to resolve GMS issues this week admitted to one club that there were “bugs” in the system which was preventing standard registrations being approved.

When a level-five club tried to troubleshoot this with the RFU, after registering a player several times over several days only for the result to read “renewal required”, the response was: “I will need evidence of this in order to re-open the case with the software developers. Please can the player send a full-sized screenshot (including date/time stamps if necessary) of them renewing their registration.”

Another player, when they clicked a help link sent to them by RFU trouble-shooters, was sent to a tutorial on how to register a child to play.

“You speak to an AI-generated chatbot and it’s useless,” said a level-five club head coach. “The people who are involved with the inception and execution of this idea should hang their heads in shame. I couldn’t have pictured it going worse.”

Telegraph Sport has learnt of one club which grew so exasperated with the situation that they employed the services of an IT technician to aid the backlog. That club added that it was aware of one team in its league which, as of last week, had only 10 players registered. There have also been further issues regarding players who are registered with two clubs and players inputting incorrect email addresses.

“We started early,” said an unpaid official for a level-five club in the North West. “We still had the same problems but we managed to iron them out a little sooner. We have just managed - in the last day or so - to get everyone registered properly.

“It can take 12 hours - the players we transferred from other clubs took 12 hours. It has been a source of anxiety. If I had any hair, I’d be tearing it out.”

One level-five club has been unable to register four of its starting XV, all of whom have been at the club for over a decade, and are concerned that they will be unavailable for selection this weekend.

A senior figure in the community game told Telegraph Sport: “There were major issues with it on Tuesday, which was the last Tuesday training night before the season starts - when there was a huge amount of activity. It has caused a lot of angst.”

“An absolute f---ing nightmare,” was the response of another club insider. “The whole thing is an absolute shambles,” said another. ‘To start from scratch is a disaster waiting to happen’

Telegraph Sport understands that among the chief reasons for making the switch was to bring rugby in line with other sports and for players to have a digital access to their playing history, with facts and statistics such as tries scored and number of games played and won.

The RFU maintains that the measure has been implemented to lessen the workload of vital club volunteers, but the unintended consequence is that it is causing more work than before: “We’re now having to chase those who haven’t done it, check that it’s been done correctly, liaise with the RFU when issues arise.”

When approached by Telegraph Sport, an RFU spokesperson said: “Ninety nine per cent of rugby clubs in England have teams registered ahead of the season starting with 72,000 adult and 100,000 age-grade players already registered.

 

“As with any change of this scale, there has been a significant effort from our whole game to reach these milestones and we’d like to thank all of our clubs and volunteers for their support. For the vast majority of players, registering has been a simple process.

 

“We had almost 4,000 registrations on Tuesday, with similar numbers registering the day before and the day after. Guidance has been provided to clubs in the event that players have been unable to register, ensuring they can continue to play and enjoy the start of the season.”

One supplementary worry is for those clubs whose second or third teams compete above level nine. These sides might have players who only play a few times a season and yet they would all need to be registered otherwise the team risks a points deduction. The same is true for players who compete in a second XV beneath level eight but might cover for their club’s first XV a handful of times a season. They would need to be registered on GMS. “That aspect is pathetic,” added the level-five official from the North West.

“I find it baffling that they went for a completely clean slate,” said a level-five head coach. “The RFU should have transferred the existing registrations, from last season, to a digital platform and then asked the clubs to remove and deselect those who aren’t still at the club. And new registrations could have been done with the new model. To start from scratch when these jobs are done by unpaid, unskilled volunteers is a disaster waiting to happen.”