Booking the Sports Ground

Bookings for tennis and netball at the Sports Ground on Abingdon Road should now be made online.

IMPORTANT: Please see the section titled “note on booking netball” further down this page for additional steps and important information regarding netball bookings – we may not be able to set up your netball court if you ignore these steps.

Where to book

Please use the online booking form for tennis and netball games at the sports ground: https://www.bnc.ox.ac.uk/sportsgroundbooking

Bookings can be made up to two weeks in advance.

The form is protected behind SSO login – if you are prompted to sign in you should enter your SSO username in the format abcd1234@OX.AC.UK and associated password – these are the same credentials you use to access your University email account.

How to book

Choose your activity by clicking on its name:

Activity selection screen for booking tennis and netball

After selecting your activity, available dates will be shown in a calendar view on the page. The system will allow you to book up to two weeks in advance; dates that are greyed out are not bookable because either they are too far in the future or there is no availability on that day.

View of date picker on booking form

IMPORTANT: Please see the next section “note on booking netball” for additional steps and important information regarding netball bookings – we may not be able to set up your netball court if you ignore these steps.

Once you’ve selected a day, beside the calendar you will see a list of available time slots for your chosen activity on that day. Click on the time you want to book for:

View of date and time selection for booking

When you’ve chosen your date and time, scroll down and fill in your details on the form. You will need to provide your name, email address, contact telephone number and select your College from the dropdown menu.

View of the form that must be completed when booking

Click the Book button at the bottom of the page when you’ve filled out all the required information. You will see a message on your screen confirming the booking has been successful.

 

Note on booking netball

Please note that for netball games you must book 2 slots – one on tennis court 2 and one on tennis court 3 – for the same time on the same day. This is because netball takes up two tennis courts.

When selecting your time slot for netball, you need to make sure you make use of the Select staff dropdown to check courts 2 and 3 are both available at the same time. Select one of the tennis courts in the dropdown to look at the available times:

View of court selection when booking netball

Then use the dropdown menu to select the other tennis court and ensure the same time slot is offered on that court:

View of 2nd court selection when booking netball. Both courts 2 & 3 must be booked for netball.

Once you’ve seen both courts 2 & 3 are available for your chosen time slot, make one booking with court 2 selected and another booking with court 3 selected.

We are hoping to streamline this in future so a netball booking will automatically be allocated across two tennis courts – this depends on Microsoft’s future development of MS Bookings.

Rescheduling/Cancelling your booking

Please ensure you cancel your booking if you will not be able to make your appointment, so other people can use the slot instead. If you need to make changes to your booking, you can use the link at the bottom of your booking confirmation email to reschedule or cancel.

Simply click “change your appointment” (highlighted in yellow below) to be taken to a page that allows you to cancel the booking or reschedule it for a different date/time.

Booking confirmation email containing "change your appointment" link

Troubleshooting/FAQs

Q: What credentials to I use to log in?

A: Use your SSO username in the format abcd1234@OX.AC.UK and the same password you use for your University email account/SOLO/Canvas etc.

Q. What happens if I see the message “something went wrong” when submitting a booking?

Refresh the page and try booking again – this generally fixes the error message

Q. I get a “stale request” error when trying to access the booking form

A. This can usually be fixed by clearing your browser’s cache or by logging in using a private/incognito tab in your web browser.

Support

In case of any technical issues or queries, please contact computer.office@bnc.ox.ac.uk (monitored Mon – Fri from 8am – 5pm)