Leeds Rugby is the entity responsible for running the World famous Rugby League side Leeds Rhinos, as well as a rapidly growing Charity Foundation.

The IT systems that are in operation within the companies network are both complex and comprehensive. More complicated than most as they have to manage Hospitality, Turnstyle and ticketing software, finance, video analysis, crowd WiFi as well as integration with the Yorkshire CCC network and systems whilst being three seperate, internal entities in The Rhinos, Yorkshire Carnegie and the Leeds Rugby Foundation. 
 

The challenge for our IT experts

Leeds Rugby had a very traditional back up routine in place. They had dozens of servers which were backed up overnight to a mxture of tape drives and external hard drives. 

The entire process relied heavily on manual intervention, which carries with it a higher risk factor. SImple human error could be an issue; forgetting to change the drives or tapes, attaching the wrong device or simply someone being on leave.

There was no validation of the backups – the tapes may have become unreadable, damaged or the wrong data be backed up. In the event of a business continuity issue, leading to data needing to be restored, then a number of other issues could arise.

This process was very cumbersome, time consuming and, most importantly, a risk to the business.

"We would not hesitate to recommend MTech as your IT partner, they’ve been absolutely fantastic in everything they’ve done here at Leeds Rhinos and have played a significant part in our growth and development."

Rob Oates, Commercial Director at Leeds Rhinos

Rob: So I’m Rob Oates, the Commercial Director here at Leeds Rhinos and I stand here on the boardroom terrace of the recently refurbished £45 million Emerald Headingley Stadium.

Thirteen years ago, we we’re doing our own IT and we were struggling; we really were struggling with the infrastructure, you know as our business was growing it became obvious, we couldn’t do it ourselves. We started talking to the guys from MTech and they were fantastic, absolutely fantastic, and we got on right from minute one.

Obviously, their capabilities came to the fore and we’ve worked with them for thirteen years. As we’ve grown and as the stadium’s grown there’s been different challenges for them and they’ve met every one and they’ve been fantastic every single one of those thirteen years. 

Tim: My name is Tim Leslie, I’m the Operations Director at MTech/ When we first came on board at Leeds Rugby, it was a classic case of two engineers just being overloaded by an ageing infrastructure, so they were firefighting all the time, unable to give any strategic input to the management and by coming on board with Chris and myself, we could give them advice and the team to back up the engineers who still work for MTech. 

Rob: From the stadium-wide Wi-Fi and the fibre network and all the work that went on, they were brilliant, absolutely brilliant and then fitting in timescales around all our main construction team, so that was a challenge for then which they passed with flying colours.

Tim: With the £45 million re-development at the stadium, we were aware that it was very high profile, so we provided a technical project manager who has a very special attention to detail which is always key in any project. He worked with the construction staff to make sure that the underlying fibre network and the ground-wide Wi-Fi and network infrastructure was of top quality and would get rid of any underlying issues, meaning that the stadium have a network that befitted such an iconic venue.

Rob: But the day-to-day stuff, you know, my emails aren’t working, my mobile phone, I’ve lost my contacts, that is super-efficient and done in such a nice, friendly, professional manner, all their backup staff are fantastic, they help everyone here at Leeds Rhinos and at Leeds Rugby. We would not hesitate to recommend MTech as your IT partner, they’ve been absolutely fantastic in everything they’ve done here at Leeds Rhinos and have played a significant part in our growth and development.