Questions
The awkward questions first.
If a rating system can't survive being asked how it works, it isn't worth trusting.
What stops a trainer from inventing a club and reviewing themselves?
This is the main attack on any rating system where the rated party pays, and we treat it that way. Four things work together: we verify the organization before accepting a review, every review is published under the club's name so a fabricated club is visible to the real clubs in that league, each person can review a given engagement once, and we flag trainers whose reviews cluster from recently registered organizations.
None of that is perfect. It's why re-hire records sit next to every verdict — faking one review is cheap, and faking two seasons of paid work isn't.
Trainers pay you. Doesn't that corrupt the ratings?
It's the obvious objection and it deserves a direct answer. Payment buys a listing and nothing else. It doesn't influence ranking, it can't remove a review, and it buys no placement above the verdict. Clubs — the side actually writing reviews — never pay us anything, which is the structural reason this works.
If we ever sell featured placement, it will be labelled as such on the page. An undisclosed paid ranking would end the only thing we're selling.
What if a trainer just isn't our style?
Then say so, and it won't count against them. "Their style wasn't a fit for how we coach" sits with cost and scheduling — reasons about your club, not about the trainer.
A director who wants their athletes to have fun and one who wants them trained hard would score the same coach at opposite ends for identical work. That number would be measuring the reviewer, not the coach.
So style is described, never scored. Clubs tag a trainer as demanding, patient with beginners, highly technical, and so on, and the profile shows how many said what. If "demanding, high intensity" isn't what your club wants, you'll know in three seconds — and nobody has been marked down for it.
Can a trainer get a bad review taken down?
No. We remove a review only if it's not from a verified engagement, contains personal information about a minor, or is abusive rather than evaluative — never because the trainer disagrees with it.
Trainers can reply publicly, and a reply sits underneath the review. Directors are perfectly capable of reading both.
Why is there no verdict on some profiles?
Because no verified club has answered yet. A trainer with no confirmed engagements shows no verdict rather than a zero, and unverified reviews never fill the gap. New trainers are listed and searchable — they're just not ranked against people with a record.
Everyone says they'd engage again. What use is that?
Fair. Most engagements end well, so most verdicts are yes — the same compression that makes star ratings useless. The verdict's real job is to surface the minority who wouldn't, and that is worth a great deal.
What separates good from excellent is the second number: how many clubs actually brought them back. Saying you'd rehire someone is free. Rehiring them costs a season's budget. When those two disagree — every club would, none did — that gap is telling you something, usually about rate or availability.
Why isn't there a star rating?
Because one director's three stars is another's five, and a five-point scale collapses in practice — everyone lands between 4.6 and 5.0, which tells you nothing.
We ask the question a director actually wants answered: would you engage them again? That has a right answer the reviewer already knows.
Each club gets one vote. If four people from one club answer, the club still counts once, so a single enthusiastic relationship can't outweigh three other clubs.
And we show the fraction, not a percentage — "1 of 1 club" is honest where "100%" is not.
Do you background-check trainers?
No, and we're careful not to imply otherwise. Where a trainer supplies a licence or certification document we confirm a document exists, and profiles distinguish that from self-reported claims.
Your club's screening obligations are unchanged by anything on this site. See how ratings work for the exact limits of what we verify.
Can parents use T-Rating?
Not currently. T-Rating connects trainers with clubs and their coaching staff — adults on both sides. We don't hold accounts for families or any information about individual athletes.
Our club uses a Gmail address. Are we out?
No. Plenty of good clubs run on free email. It means we verify you by hand against your league registration or the staff list on your website, which usually takes a day.
What does it cost a club?
Nothing, and that isn't an introductory offer. The side writing the reviews should never have a financial relationship with us.
What happens if a trainer stops paying?
Their reviews stay. The reviews belong to the clubs that wrote them, not to the trainer and not to us. What lapses is the listing, not the record.
Something we haven't answered?
Clubs can ask us anything on the club verification form. We'd rather field a hard question than lose you to a guess.