Question Groups and permissions?

I'm sure I'm being stupid but I can't find anyway to manage permissions to the different forums on my website other than using the standard Joomla groups (registered, author, editor, etc)

I need to create groups for full members, fans, players and coaches.

Thanks for any help or advice.

please see the documentation on Ranks management . hopefully that will have all the info you need

Thanks I have read that and created a special rank called "Youth team member", but I cant find any thing that then allows me to create a forum that only people with the rank "youth team member" can access?

The permissions are not giving through selfmade ranks, but through the joomla default groups.

Perhaps you could give all "Youth team member" the group (Joomla user configuration) author, editor or publisher and then create a forum for this special joomla group.

Then I would have to trust them not to start publishing articles on the front page of the website!

I'm surprised there is no way of managing permissions, do other Joomla forums allow permissions or group management? I have only used phpbb forums before and could manage access pretty simply.

Better groups and permission is on the cards for the devs im pretty sure. They have been working on getting a J1.5 stable version out and now they have they can start work on adding more features. Though not sure at what stage this is planned, it could be months as im not sure of their priority list. I think MVC format is probably quite high up there first as well as better moderation tools and attachment/image management.