In 2002 I made the fatal mistake of pointing out that the lack of a fixtures secretary was having an adverse effect on the playing success of Harlow Rugby Club. No sooner was my back turned than I found myself elected; I suspect most of you became fixtures secretaries in the same way. The next thing I discovered was that once your name got around you got bombarded with emails from other clubs sending to perhaps 50 or more clubs to set up one game. In any less polite community than rugby it would have been called SPAM. I was convinced that there must be a better way. A few weeks later I was watching an Eastern Counties Cup game with Ivor Smith, these days the secretary of Essex. We both agreed that a web based exchange may be a solution and I offered to write a program to provide one. Ivor offered to promote it through his Essex site and provided a lot of useful advice and encouragement. This was how the exchange was born. Dave Sharp