Touch Football Scoreboard: What the Scorebug Must Show, from Touch Count to Drop-Off
Six touches, one-point tries and a sin bin that is not measured in minutes. What a touch football scoreboard has to get right.
A touch football scoreboard must show four things: the score, a count-up match clock, which team is in possession, and the touch count from one to six. In broadcast the same graphic is also called the scorebug. The touch count is the marquee element. Possession changes on the sixth touch, so a viewer who cannot see the count cannot read the state of the game at all, and no other element on the bug is a substitute for it.
Everything else on a touch bug is secondary, and the sport is unusual enough that a scorebug borrowed from rugby league will be wrong in at least four places.
What a touch football scoreboard must show
| Element | Why it matters | Source of data |
|---|---|---|
| Touch count, 1 to 6 | The core mechanic of the sport. Possession changes after the sixth touch | Touch events and resets |
| Possession indicator | The touch count is meaningless without knowing whose set it is | Possession state |
| Score, home and away | A try is worth one point, so margins are narrow and every score matters | Try events |
| Match clock and half | Two halves of 20 minutes, counting up, running more or less continuously | Match clock |
| Sin-bin state | Under Touch Football Australia and Federation of International Touch rules this counts possessions, not minutes | Sin-bin event and possession count |
| Player count | Six a side on the field, so losing one is a bigger proportional hit than in any full-contact code | Active sin bins |
| Drop-off state | Sudden-death format where both teams shed players, so the on-field numbers change | Period state |
| Team names | Touch broadcasts frequently carry short names only, with no crest asset available | Team configuration |
The touch count is the whole bug
A touch football team has a maximum of 14 players with no more than six on the field at any time. The team in possession is entitled to six touches before a change of possession. After each touch the player performs a rollball at the mark and the dummy half, known simply as the Half, picks the ball up. Defenders retire seven metres at a rollball and ten metres at a tap.
That gives the scorebug a counter that increments roughly every few seconds and resets on three different triggers:
- A try. The set ends, possession changes, the count returns to one.
- A change of possession. Either the sixth touch is completed or the attacking team loses the ball.
- A penalty tap. The penalised side gives up possession and the attacking team starts a fresh set of six.
Two of the sport's most abrupt turnovers do not involve a touch at all. The Half may pass or run but cannot be touched while in possession, and if the Half is touched, possession changes immediately. The Half also cannot score: a try is awarded when a player other than the Half grounds the ball on or over the try line. So a bug that only listens for touch events will sit on "TOUCH 3" while possession has already flipped. The counter has to be driven by possession state, not by counting touches upward and hoping.
The sixth touch needs its own visual state, not just the numeral 6. On the sixth touch the attacking side must score or lose the ball, which is the highest-tension moment in any set. A viewer with the sound off should be able to tell that from the bug alone, which is why the widget usually pulses or shifts colour rather than simply ticking over.
Pace is the other constraint. Touches come fast, and a counter that lags even slightly reads as broken. The widget has to update the instant the referee calls the touch, so it is the element you optimise the whole bug around.
The clock is easy. The sin bin is not.
The match clock is the simplest in any code LIGR supports: 40 minutes, two halves of 20, counting up, with a half-time break. It runs continuously and stops rarely. Competition rules may vary the halves, so it should be configuration rather than a hard-coded 2 x 20, but there is no time-on mechanic, no shot clock and no stoppage-time calculation to get wrong.
The sin bin is where touch football breaks a conventional scorebug entirely. Under the Touch Football Australia 8th Edition rules and the Federation of International Touch playing rules, a sin-binned player serves four completed possessions, not a fixed number of minutes. There is no countdown to render. The correct graphic is a possession counter, something closer to "2 of 4" than to a clock ticking down to zero.
Some competitions do run timed bins instead, commonly two or four minutes. That means a touch football scoreboard has to be able to render both a possession-based bin and a time-based bin, and pick between them from the competition rules rather than from the sport. If it can only draw a countdown, it cannot cover the sport's own governing rulebooks.
The drop-off is the other format-specific state. Where a drawn match needs a result, both teams reduce to four players on the field and play continues until the next try, with teams shedding further players as it goes. The bug has to show the reduced on-field numbers and signpost the format, because the pictures alone will not explain why there are suddenly four players a side.
Scoring events and what the bug does
| Event | Value | What the bug does |
|---|---|---|
| Try | +1 | Score increments by one, scorer and minute, touch count resets, possession swaps |
| Penalty try | +1 | Same value as any other try. No kick follows and no conversion graphic should ever chain from it |
| Sixth-touch turnover | No score | Possession indicator swaps, touch count resets, distinct from a penalty turnover |
| Penalty | No score | Offence type and the team benefiting, then a fresh set of six from the tap |
| Try under review | Varies | Provisional score state, and a rollback if the grounding is not awarded |
Because every try is worth one point, a touch scoreline behaves nothing like a rugby scoreline. Scores climb one at a time and often into the teens or twenties, so the score field needs room for two digits without reflowing, and the score animation should be proportionate. A graphic package designed for a five-point try will over-celebrate every single score in touch.
Penalties are worth naming on the bug because the offence categories are specific and readable: forward pass, offside, obstruction. Where the infringement occurs inside the seven-metre zone, the tap is taken at the nearest seven-metre line, a restart worth distinguishing from a tap elsewhere.
Extensions: the stats worth putting on the bug
A scorebug extension is a stat panel that pops out from the bug, holds for a few seconds and retracts. It can fire automatically on a milestone or be pulled manually from the Control Room, and it can carry a sponsor lock-up. Touch football has fewer natural stats than most codes, which makes the ones that exist more valuable:
- Completed sets. How many sets each team finished with a try or a kick rather than losing the ball early. The closest thing touch has to an efficiency metric.
- Turnovers forced. Split between sixth-touch turnovers and errors, which are very different things.
- Try-scorer leaderboard. Built from the try events already logged, so it costs nothing extra.
- Possession share. Straightforward to derive from possession state, and meaningful in a sport built on sets.
- Mixed-division team composition. In mixed touch the maximum number of male players on the field is three, with a minimum of one male and one female. That is a live constraint on every interchange, and worth showing.
How LIGR drives a touch football scoreboard
Data in. Touch football sits almost entirely outside the tier where commercial match-data feeds operate. There is no Sportradar or Opta touch feed to plug into at association or state level, which makes this the clearest case in the whole set for LIGR's central argument: the scoring app is the feed. The LiveScore app gives an operator sport-specific buttons for the events that actually happen, touch, rollball, turnover, try, penalty, sin bin, and the graphics update from those presses. Every press is timestamped, which is what makes the stat extensions and the automated highlight clips possible afterwards.
Graphics. Scoreboards are built and data-bound in Fuse, with premium animation authored in Rive. Because the bug is bound to data rather than drawn as a picture, the touch count is a variable and not a redraw, and so are the half length, the bin format and the drop-off numbers. A competition that runs timed sin bins and one that runs the four-possession rule use the same published theme with different settings.
Automation. Game Plans triggers graphics off match events and off the clock, so the possession arrow swaps and the touch counter resets as part of the same turnover rather than as two operator actions. Where you want a human in the loop, typically for a disputed grounding, the Control Room takes over without changing the graphics package. LIGR already runs Australian community and semi-professional sport at volume, including the SANFL, and works across codes with Queensland Rugby League and Basketball NSW.
Touch football is in build at LIGR, so this page is the requirements rather than a product shot. If you run a touch competition and want the bug specced against your rule set, that is worth starting now.
Frequently asked questions
What is a touch football scoreboard overlay?
A touch football scoreboard overlay is the graphic laid over the live picture that carries the match state: the score, the count-up clock and half, which team is in possession, and the touch count from one to six. The same graphic is also called a scorebug, and a touch rugby scoreboard means the same thing again. It also needs a sin bin state, and a drop-off indicator in a knockout match that finishes level.
What does a touch football scorebug need to display?
Four elements are essential: the touch count from one to six, a possession indicator showing which team is attacking, the score, and a count-up match clock with the half. Touch competitions also expect a sin-bin state and, in knockout formats, a drop-off indicator. The touch count is the dominant element and should be the most visually prominent thing on the bug after the score.
How many touches before possession changes in touch football?
Six. The attacking team is entitled to six touches before a change of possession. After each touch the player in possession performs a rollball and play restarts. The count resets to one after a try, after any change of possession, and after a penalty tap, which gives the attacking team a fresh set of six.
How long is a sin bin in touch football?
Under the Touch Football Australia 8th Edition rules and the Federation of International Touch playing rules, a sin-binned player serves four completed possessions rather than a set number of minutes. Some competitions run timed bins instead, commonly two or four minutes. A scorebug therefore needs to render either a possession counter or a countdown clock, chosen from the competition rules.
How many points is a try worth in touch football?
One point. A try is awarded when a player other than the Half places the ball on or over the try line without being touched. There is no conversion, and a penalty try is also worth one point. That means scorelines climb one at a time, so the score field needs room for two digits and the try animation should be scaled for a one-point sport.
Why does the touch count reset when the Half is touched?
Because the Half cannot be touched while in possession. If the Half is touched, possession changes immediately rather than the touch count incrementing, and the Half also cannot score a try. A scorebug driven purely by counting touches upward will show the wrong state. The counter has to follow possession state so that these turnovers reset it correctly.
What happens to the scoreboard in a drop-off?
Where a drawn match needs a result, both teams reduce to four players on the field and play continues until the next try, with teams shedding further players as the drop-off goes on. The bug should signpost the drop-off state explicitly and show the reduced on-field numbers, because the camera shot alone will not explain why there are four players a side.
Can you produce touch football graphics without a data feed?
Yes, and in practice you have to. Touch football sits outside the tier where commercial match-data feeds operate, so there is no official feed to take. LIGR runs the same graphics from its LiveScore app, where an operator logs touches, turnovers, tries, penalties and sin bins as they happen, with every event timestamped for stats and highlights.
Spec your touch football scoreboard against your own rules
Half length, sin-bin format, drop-off numbers and mixed-division limits differ by competition. In LIGR they are settings on a published theme, not separate designs.