Case Study: Behind the scenes at the RWC 2007 - November 2007  

As the dust settled on the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France, S&T asked Chris Catling, Deltatre’s project manager for the tournament (pictured right), to reflect on the event both from the company’s perspective and his own experience. Unforeseen circumstances just before one of the matches meant the technology service provider’s equipment almost came to a sticky end…….

For France 2007, Deltatre was commissioned by Cap Gemini to provide the official results and statistics for the tournament; build and manage the Rugbyworldcup.com website; and by TVH to provide the tournament graphics for the host television feed. It has been a busy year and the technology behind the tournament had similar successes to the tournament as a whole.
On a personal level, I owe a great deal to S&T for my involvement in the event, as just over 18 months ago I had just suffered a career ending injury which basically had drawn a line under my 10 year professional rugby career. As a regular subscriber to S&T, I had been already researching the sports technology industry as I was fairly certain this was a career path I wanted to follow once the boots were firmly hung up. While reading one of the articles in an S&T newsletter, I came across the company I now work for. Having seen the managing director, Paul Bristow, quoted in an article regarding the future of sports production in a broadband environment, I did a little more research on the company and applied for one of the many freelance jobs that the company regularly advertises. It was to my good fortune that I made contact with the company at exactly the time they were putting together their tender for the RWC – after meeting up with them and helping them out on a freelance basis with the tender, once the project had been confirmed I accepted a full time job with Deltatre and was appointed as a project manager for the RWC service. (I hope S&T is not expecting an introduction fee!) [Editor: It's okay, we'll take tickets instead!]

Servicing the tournament

For the Rugby World Cup project, Deltatre was sub-contracted by Cap Gemini who was the Official Technology Partner for the tournament. The project scope with Cap Gemini included supplying the official results and statistics and the re-design and maintenance of both Irb.com and Rugbyworldcup.com. In a separate contract with the host broadcaster, TF1, we were also appointed to supply and operate the graphics for the International feed and the uni-lateral French language TF1 production. As a company, we have a wealth of experience in providing these services for football [soccer] and other sports; UEFA remains one of our major clients for which all four pillars of our service provision are delivered: Results & Statistics; Website services; Broadband and New Media production; and Event Management. We were also the preferred partner of Cap Gemini because of the experience the company has at previous World Cups and European tournaments – experience which proved invaluable coping with the many network issues at many of the stadia in the early part of the tournament.
It was an amazing two months in which many challenges were met and successfully managed. These ranged from the normal teething problems that you would expect, network issues and dealing with reconfigured third-party firewalls that always seemed to reject our IPs; to some that we could never have planned for. One in particular came before the England v South Africa (the pool game rather than the final, thankfully!). Having had a remarkably smooth set-up on the day before the match and the day of the match – everything seemed to be going swimmingly well. Our position in the middle of the press tribune at the Stade de France, normally one of the best seats in the house, was suddenly compromised just as the English national anthem started.
The stadium team consists of three match spotters who collect the stats, a supervisor, five laptops, two routers, a couple of switches and a whole host of non-waterproof equipment. To our absolute horror, as the first drum roll of the English national anthem sprung into life, an English supporter in the stand above our position, obviously a little too excited about demonstrating his national allegiance, jumped to his feet and managed to knock the tray of lagers he had lined up for his in-match consumption (presumably to drown his sorrows throughout the game, given the way the England team played that night). The golden syrup managed to channel itself into a groove in the stadium infrastructure and channel itself directly above our stadium position. It was soon realised that a waterfall of alcohol landing on the equipment had potentially horrendous results, because not only the main system components were suddenly made non-functional but the back-up system had also been soaked.

God Save the Equipment

I hope the Queen will forgive me for swearing quite a bit during the melodic tribute to her as we frantically replaced a four way plug adaptor which had been completely soaked and was beginning to spark. Fortunately a UPS unit that was installed under the desk and sheltered from the ‘lager shower’ continued to function and gave us continuity to allow the system to be briefly rebooted and re-powered during the South African anthem – never has an anthem seemed so short! As the game started, a helpful member of the organising committee made a makeshift umbrella out of a cardboard box that was to hand and thankfully the first of the 1,000 stats that the stats collectors log during an average match was at the kick-off; the stadium scoreboard correctly started at the first second; the website received the kick-off information and the TV graphics which were being broadcast around the world (with an estimated tournament global audience of 4bn) were unaffected. You can rest assured we channelled some of the same beverage a little more accurately down our throats after the game!

When Irish eyes are smiling

Perhaps another personal highlight of the tournament was watching one of the Irish games in a crowded Irish bar in the middle of Paris. As we were particularly squashed in and getting to know the Irish fans a little better than we had expected to, the referee penalised one of the Irish players at a critical moment in the game – the Irishman next to me was half way through a passionate diatribe on why the “#@~#” the referee had awarded the penalty, when the penalty explanation graphic appeared on screen exactly at the same time the French director decided to replay a super slow-mo of the offending Irish player collapsing over the top of the ball – he quickly sought the solace of his pint of Guinness.
As a company, the project stretched our resources to the maximum and many have taken lifelong experiences from the tournament – not least one of our graphics operators. Minutes before the match transmission for the Tonga v Samoa group game he was busy prepping the pre-match graphics when all of a sudden a very panicked production assistant ran into the OB van to ask if there were any English speakers around. One of the Deltatre graphics operators (all of whom were bi-lingual) owned up, before it was explained to him that the pitch-side journalist responsible for interviewing the Tongan and Samoan coaches had been inadvertently delayed and was not going to be there for the start of the game. The Deltatre operator, having been fully prepped on the interview questions to ask and having spoken to the absent journalist, demonstrated another string to his bow and interviewed both Samoan and Tongan coaches before heading back to the OB van to graphic the interviews and continue operating the match graphics.
The project from our perspective was a great success and the legacy we have as a company is a great rugby product that includes output to stadium scoreboards, website delivery, TV graphics and official results and statistics. We will just have to work on water proofing the equipment for 2011!
    
England fan image pictured above courtesy of Getty Images Sport/Cate Gillon

Closing ceremony/presentation image pictured above courtesy of Getty Images Sport/Warren Little

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