During the summer I managed to gain some work experience with Rugby Union side Saracens in their Finance department. At Saracens’ new stadium, Allianz Park I met the finance director Mitesh Velani.
The first morning was spent meeting the rest of the finance team as well as people from all of the other departments. It is a very relaxed and friendly environment in the office with everyone making me feel welcome. A tour of the stadium and visit to the club store followed.
In the afternoon I was asked to help count the takings from their previous friendly and I was also introduced to the system of processing sales from Ticketmaster.
It was a busy week for Saracens as they had a new strip to launch, tickets for their double header at Twickenham delivered and a preseason friendly to play.
The next day I met with the clubs store manager Michael Rea who was very relaxed considering the strip launch was less than 24 hours away and the strips still had to be delivered. This was normal according to him. Michael gave me a great insight into the running of a rugby club store compared with football clubs stores.
The next 2 days I was processing the details of the Ticketmaster sales onto the Saracens system whilst being given more counting duties, this time with money brought in by their summer camps and other classes.
Time at the SPFL
The following week I had arranged to work at the SPFL with Neil Doncaster for a couple of days.
I arrived at Hampden on the Tuesday and was met by Neil with the news that he was going to do the ice bucket challenge and I was going to help carry this out. I met the rest of the team and spent some of the morning with Ross, who ran the SPFL YouTube channel, organising the ice bucket challenge.
Neil invited me to sit in on his business lunch with the SPFL’s PR Company which opened my eyes as to how the organisation operates.
Following the lunch, the ice bucket challenge took place in the home dressing room with quite an audience. I felt it was best for my future employability that I was not one of the people who delivered the freezing water over the chief executive of the SPFL so managed to hide in the background.
That evening I went to the league cup game involving Hibs and Dumbarton along with Neil and was taken into the director’s lounge where I had the chance to network with some important people at Hibs and to potentially gain further work experience.
The next day I travelled to Aberdeen where the draw for the next round was taking place. It was great to see how the draw was organised and thankfully it went smoothly. It was also streamed live through the SPFL YouTube channel. Unfortunately I could not sort out a favourable draw for my own team, however from a financial point of view Celtic away was the best draw possible.
Both of my work placements were valuable for me and will hopefully lead to further placements at different clubs during my final year at UCFB.
