With 6 or 8 teams everyone plays every round. With 5, 7 or 9 someone has to sit out each round, and doing that by hand usually ends with one team idle twice while another never rests. The fix is the circle method: add an imaginary extra team, schedule as if it were real, and whoever is paired with it has the bye.
Open the free schedule tool (paste the teams, pick a start date and weekday; byes are marked for you)
Five invented teams play a single round robin. Each round has two games and one team on a bye, and every team has its bye in a different round. Home team is listed first.
| Round | Games | Bye |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Owls v Lynx, Bears v Foxes | Hawks |
| 2 | Foxes v Hawks, Lynx v Bears | Owls |
| 3 | Bears v Owls, Hawks v Lynx | Foxes |
| 4 | Lynx v Foxes, Owls v Hawks | Bears |
| 5 | Hawks v Bears, Foxes v Owls | Lynx |
Each team plays 4 games and rests once. If a team must be off in a particular week (a holiday, a venue clash), decide which team takes which line of the list before dates are attached, rather than moving single games afterwards.
The rounds come from the same code the page runs and a test recomputes this table from it, so it cannot drift from the tool.
As many as there are teams: 5 teams need 5 rounds, 7 teams need 7. An even number of teams needs one fewer round than teams, because nobody sits out; an odd number adds a dummy team, and whoever is paired with it has the bye.
Exactly one in a single round robin, whatever the size. With 5 teams that is one idle round each across 5 rounds, with two games played in every round.
n × (n − 1) ÷ 2, odd or even. Five teams play 10 games and seven teams play 21, because each team plays every other team once: 4 games each for 5 teams.
Only if the bye falls in a different round for each team, which the circle method guarantees. If a team needs a particular week off, give them the round where they have the bye by choosing which team takes which line of the list before dates are set.
Repeat the same rounds with home and away reversed. Each team then has two byes, one in each half, and meets every opponent twice.
Related: how to make a round-robin schedule, rounds and games for 3 to 16 teams, and ready-made fixture lists.