I am looking for a program (preferably an Excel tool) that will
calculate league fixtures. It is essential that the program is able to
cope with ground-sharing, and an optimum mix of home and away matches
is important. The program should also be able to cope with an odd
number of teams giving the odd team out a bye.

I would also be interested in any web page detailing the theory of how
to set league fixtures in and how to accommodate ground-sharing and
still have a good mix of home and away matches.

I am not interested in solving this problem using on-line tools that
keep the information somewhere other than my PC, java or large files.

Hello Mesman,

I can't be sure these suggestions will do everything you are
interested in but they appear to handle the basic problem. From your
instructions - these suggestions do not use web access.

From "flying pig", 
  http://www.flyingpig.net/
or the "freeware page"
  http://www.tomsou.btinternet.co.uk/freeware.htm
an Excel spreadsheet that does a variety of fixture calculations. A
pretty extensive readme file that indicates he has put some
significant effort in maintaining the application.

From the old simtel library
  http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/49944.html
This is a DOS application. The only explanation that I got w/o
downloading the application was that it calculated league fixtures. I
can't run the program on my Macintosh so I can't comment on how well
it works.

I did not find any specific theory sites on line. Most of the sites I
did find appeared to be more interested in gambling on the matches
instead of setting up the matches. If the material that comes with
these applications do not provide enough information - please make a
clarification request and I will dig harder.

  --Maniac

---

Clarification of Answer by maniac-ga on 23 Sep 2002 18:43 PDT

Oops - the first link should be...
  http://www.flyinpig.net/
Sorry.
  --Maniac