About Me

For 12 years, I ran an annual sporting event – an Ultimate Frisbee tournament – in Cardiff. This was part of an series of tournaments run by UK Ultimate Ltd. We had over 1,000 players competing in teams from all over the UK.

I had a budget of (approx) £15,000: I organised 20 pitches, security, refreshments, First Aid, physiotherapists, camping, rubbish collection and generally try to ensure a smooth running event.  That meant keeping a lot of people happy, and a lot of plates spinning.

Perhaps my favorite part of this job was that over the years I identified and solved a lot of issues. Some of these seemed insignificant, and the solutions were often simple in retrospect, but it’s these little things that keep the whole machine oiled.

• The most common question at the TD desk was “where should I be now?” I came up with a visual representation of the games, showing where the winer and the loser would go next. It had to be compact, and need no explanation.
• As each game finished, we needed to collect the scores to update the schedule – this happened over 20 pitches at roughly the same time. This was made lots easier with a pushbike and a pair of CB radios. Competitors became used to the sight of me tearing across the site on my mountain bike.
• One year I had £50 to spare in the budget. So I bought a load of bananas, and gave them out for free to anyone who came to the TD desk. I noticed that the general atmosphere around the TD desk was much better. After that I always came to the tournament laden with free fruit. It amazed me that in a budget of £15,000, this seemed to make more difference than anything else to how happy people were!