OK, so this year I coached my two DD's in their under10's netball team. We are part of a football and netball club and because the u10's play modified Netta rules, the don't play for a premiership as such even though they play in the regular home and away season. So when the finals roll around, all the u10s teams are allocated a final game to pay at to kinda make up for it. Thing is, we are a country league and the teams are really spread out - I'm talking like 300KM+ travel to our furtherest game! And the finals are allocated to the clubs who aren't playing in the football final. So our Under 10's were unfortunately slotted to play at Hillston, which is nearly a 3hour drive away. I declined the game, which the organisers understood, because it was kinda pointless to go all that way when we had to be there at 8.30am.

So my problem is this. When it got to the end of the season, I told all the parents that we may have to play a game at one of the finals and I would let them know if we did, and if they didn't hear from me then we didn't have to play. So the schedule came through, I told them we weren't going to play and left it at that. I did tell parents when they asked me about it and I told them that no, we weren't playing. There were two parents I didn't worry about telling as they are sisters and one of them has a DD that played in my team and the older one plays in the under 12s. I didn't tell them as I did not see them in person. However, in the local paper on Friday it was advertised that our team had to play at this town despite me giving over a weeks notice that we weren't so obviously no one thought to tell the paper that. So that meant I had to contact these two parents to tell them no, we weren't playing. I knew that one of them had to go there anyway as the older girl was meant to play there, so that wasnt' a drama if she took the younger girl. Her sister I could not get in touch with. I probably naively though that when Sister B got her message, that she would let Sister A know. But it turns out that Sister B does not check her phone messages and they both travelled all the way out there thinking these two girls would be playing netball. They all travelled in the same car too.

I have left a phone message with Sister A apologising for the confusion and asked her to call me back so I can apologise to her instead of leaving a message. But this person is one of those people that is quite narky and will stab you in the back as soon as you turn your back on her, so if she is ****ty about the situation, then I know she's running around telling everyone who will listen about it. So I am prepared to get a serve from her when I do speak with her. And I probably kind of deserve it too as ultimately I am the coach and I should have made sure she got the message, but if I could not get in touch with her, how much of the responsibility for the mistake should I take? Also, because I said I would let them know and if they didn't hear from me then we weren't playing, would you still drive up there anyway even though you had not heard from the coach that you had to play or would you call them to check? I do feel bad about it, but I can't help but think that this is not all my fault either. I gave explicit instructions about what I would do, so can I be blamed if they forgot?

Either way I know it is going to turn into a ****ty situation and I'm probably going to have to suck it up and deal with it.