Tag: Calendar

A few weeks back I posted a link to my Google Calendar with the Newcastle United fixtures on. I had to do this as Google removed the “search” option so it was impossible to find any useful calendars.

They’ve not reintroduced this, but they have added a new slew of “Interesting Calendars” (their words) which include fixture details for a ton of football (sorry, “soccer”) teams as well as a plethora of other sports. As a bonus, you can watch the scores update in real-time-ish as the match progresses via the details on your calendar.

To get to them, look down the bottom left of your Google Calendar screen for “Other Calendars” and click on “Add” at the bottom of the list. Then just navigate through the categories to find the club and competition you want.

I would note a couple of things, however. And these are the reasons I’m keeping my calendar online and updated as well. The first is that there are no TV details for the games. This is understandable as mine’s geared at UK users whereas Google’s far more international. The second is that it looks like you have to subscribe to three or four calendars for each team if you want to follow their league, league cup and European fixtures as well. Why not one calendar for all fixtures regardless of competition?

Oh, and they’ve mis-spelled “Darllington” (sic) in the League Trophy section. Note that this is the Trophy and not the League Cup. They’re different and there doesn’t appear to be a listing for League Cup fixtures. Unless they’re included with the main team fixtures – in which case why not do the same with the League Trophy ones? [I just checked – they’re not. Google doesn’t list our fixture at Peterborough on the 22nd of September]

So, 75% for effort to Google. But I still think they’d have been better just replacing the ability to search for useful calendars. The work would be done for them – and better – by fans of the sports in question. Mind you, I bet the American sports are far better organised especially as, with the NFL at least, there’s only one competition.

Looking for Newcastle United fixtures for Google Calendar? Courtesy of the hard work done here, I’ve imported them in and made my version publically accessible. Just add a new calendar “from URL” using the following:

http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/r39dbfbfdu7opkaqbe63ko3vk8%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

The advantage is that any updates I make (date changes etc) will be automatically reflected on your calendar. Full credit for initial hard work to Latty’s!

Incidentally, if Google hadn’t taken the calendar search option away, this post wouldn’t be necessary as you could just have looked for the likely umpteen versions on their system. Grr.