How to Follow The Daily Mail Trophy: A Simple Guide

In its inaugural year the Daily Mail Trophy promises to add a lot of excitement to the autumn term. Here is a simple beginners guide to following the Daily Mail Trophy.

1. Navigate to the Daily Mail Trophy microsite from the Homepage of the Schools Rugby Website. Simply click on the Daily Mail Trophy Logo to be taken to the microsite.
2. Participating schools who use FixturesPRO can also navigate to the Daily Mail Trophy microsite directly from their 1st XV fixture list where all Daily Mail Trophy fixtures are linked.
3. The Daily Mail Trophy microsite displays the current Merit Table with links to a list of participating schools and the fixtures & results.
4. On the Fixtures & Results, click the ""Select Another Date" button to pick any date and see which Daily Mail Trophy matches are taking place. Perfect for planning your season and for monitoring how your rivals are likely to fare!
5. From the Fixtures & Results you can also navigate to any of the participating schools' rugby microsites on the website to see their complete fixture lists and assess how they are performing in more detail.
6. When following your team’s fixture list you will notice that Merit Table matches appear with a gold Daily Mail Trophy Logo to the left of each Daily Mail Trophy fixture. These are the fixtures where your team will be awarded points that count towards the Daily Mail Trophy.
7. In a designated Daily Mail Trophy match teams are awarded 4 points for a win, 2 points for a draw, a bonus point for scoring 4 tries or for losing by 7 points or less. Your points total is then averaged against the amount of Daily Mail Trophy matches played.
8. Points are awarded for every Daily Mail Trophy match played. This rewards schools that play the most Daily Mail Trophy fixtures, which are generally the toughest on the circuit. For every Daily Mail Trophy match a school is awarded 0.1 points to its average.
9. Don’t forget to check the Daily Mail rugby pages in the newspaper and in the Mail Online editions. We will be covering the competition extensively.
10. Don’t forget there are also other ways to draw the attention of your supporters to the big matches. Here are a few ideas:
    1. If your school uses FixturesPRO you could arrange for one of your budding journalists and professional photographers at the school to write match reports and take actions shots – and then upload them with the match report at the end of each match.
    2. If your school uses FixturesPRO you can use Mobile FixturesPRO to upload the results at the end of each match as the final whistle blows.
    3. If your school has Team Sheet Builder you can also use mobile FixturesPRO + Live Scores to record each try, conversion or penalty score as they happen live.
    4. You can also Tweet any fixture or result by hitting the Twitter link that appears next to each fixture. The Tweet is preformatted and if the school has FixturesPRO it will have a link directly back to your sports website where your followers might find the match report and of course details of the next Daily Mail Trophy match.
    5. You can also follow us @SchoolsSports during the season, which will be a great additional source to keep you tuned in to what’s on where and when and for all the latest Daily Mail Trophy news.
    6. If you Tweet then ensure to use hash tag #dmtrophy for any Daily Mail Trophy matches.
    7. You can also share your news articles appearing in the Mail Online via email, or on Facebook or Twitter, as well as via an array of other popular social networks – just click through to the Mail Online and hit one of the share links
11. If you have any videos of match highlights from a Daily Mail Trophy fixture, click here to find out how to feature your videos on the Schools' Rugby Website.

We hope the above helps and we wish all the participating players, coaches and supporters the very best for the Daily Mail Trophy and the season ahead.