The second leg of the Rugby Europe Sevens Championship Series took place in Split, Croatia, from 24–26 July, bringing together 24 teams for three packed days of international sevens at Stadion Park Mladeži.
Joe McDonnell (third from the left) with the Rugby Europe Championship Organising team
SportLoMo was once again on the ground supporting Rugby Europe, with Joe McDonnell travelling to Split to work pitchside alongside the Rugby Europe organising team throughout the tournament.
For Joe, the weekend started before the first whistle. From the Managers’ Meeting on Thursday through to the Cup Finals and trophy ceremony on Sunday evening, he was on hand to support Rugby Europe officials and team managers and help keep the competition moving through a very busy schedule.
And busy it certainly was.
With 68 matches over three days and just 22 minutes between kick-offs, there wasn’t much downtime. Play ran from 10am until after 9pm each day, with twelve men’s and twelve women’s teams competing across pool and knockout stages before the tournament reached its finals on Sunday.
A familiar face at Rugby Europe tournaments
Joe is no stranger to this type of environment. He has supported Rugby Europe tournaments before and brings a huge amount of sporting and competition knowledge to the role.
As one of SportLoMo’s development engineers, Joe also knows the platform inside out. His technical expertise, combined with a broad understanding of how competitions work across different sports, has been especially valuable in the development of the new Live Stats module, which he has been heavily involved in building and refining.
The SportLoMo Tournament and Live Stats platform was used throughout the Split Championship to manage team sheets, fixtures, pool stages, knockout progression, scoring and final rankings. As match events were recorded and results confirmed, standings and knockout brackets updated automatically, helping Rugby Europe manage the competition from the opening games right through to the finals. Rugby Europe and its member nation’s live stream and digital platforms receive scores and details in real time from the platform.
The Rugby Europe Sevens Championship Series in Split, Croatia, from 24–26 July 2026
Live Stats gets another run-out
Split was the second Rugby Europe tournament to use SportLoMo’s new Live Stats module, following its debut earlier in July in Hamburg, where Calum Kyne was on the ground supporting Rugby Europe.
Joe got his turn to put Live Stats through its paces across a full international tournament, using it pitchside to record match events as they happened.
Having been involved in the development of both the new module and its earlier iteration, Joe was particularly pleased with how it performed in a demanding live environment.
“With the old system, you were working hard to keep up with the game and get everything entered quickly. Live Stats takes a lot of that pressure away – you can now focus on what’s happening on the pitch and know that match details are being captured in realtime.”
We’ll take a closer look at Live Stats, how it worked in Split and what we learned from using it across the tournament in a separate case study.
There was one match Joe wasn’t going to miss…
After two long days on Friday and Saturday, there was another important sporting fixture competing for Joe’s attention on Sunday.
Back home in Ireland, Mayo were playing in the All-Ireland Senior Football Final at Croke Park.
For anyone unfamiliar with Gaelic football, an All-Ireland Final is a very big deal in Ireland – and for someone from Mayo, this one was particularly hard to ignore.
So, towards the closing stages of the sevens tournament, scoring duties were handed over to organisers of the Croatian Rugby Union, giving Joe the chance to watch the final from home.
The handover also gave the team an opportunity to see how quickly operators who hadn’t previously used Live Stats could get comfortable with the system. We’ll save that part of the story for our Live Stats case study. But let us say the team are very happy.
Back at the office: SportLomo team and friends celebrate the Mayo All-Ireland team and cup homecoming
Another busy summer with Rugby Europe
Split rounded off a busy few weeks for the SportLoMo team supporting Rugby Europe tournaments across Europe.
The Championship followed SportLoMo’s involvement in Hamburg earlier in July and the Rugby Europe Conference event in Andorra, continuing a partnership with Rugby Europe that dates back to 2021.
Today, SportLoMo supports Rugby Europe and its 40+ member unions (countries) across areas including competition and member registration, discipline, referee assignments and tournament management.
These trips involve long days and plenty of preparation, but they also give our team a valuable opportunity to work directly alongside Rugby Europe and see the SportLoMo platform being used in a live international tournament environment.
A big thank you to Joe for another long weekend representing SportLoMo, and to Rugby Europe and the Croatian Rugby Union for having us in Split.
And after 68 games of rugby sevens, we’re glad Joe managed to squeeze in a little Gaelic football too and the icing on the cake was his home county, Mayo won the All-Ireland after a gap of 75 years.