EUSA was honoured to have welcomed Mr Neil Carney, Project Director for the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games, to last weekend’s European Universities Games 2020 Convention in Belgrade, Serbia. 

Delivering some of the highest profile sport events around the world over the past 17 years, Mr Carney has considerable experience in the planning and delivery of major multi-sport Games operations. This includes the 2012 London Olympics, the 2015 European Games, 2017 Islamic Games and recently, the 2018 Commonwealth Games.

As part of the first day of the EUG2020 Convention, Mr Carney presented on the “Planning and Managing of Major Events”. The EUSA Technical Comission, EUSA Office staff, EUG2020 Organising Committee members and representatives from Serbia’s National and Regional Sport Federations were all in attendence to listen to Mr Carney and his experiences.

One of the key points stressed was the need to create a strong and positive working culture, and establish clear leadership structures as soon as possible when building an Organsing Committee. Mr Carney went on to discuss the usual life cycle for major events such as the European Universities Games, including planning cycles, testing the organising committee, event delivery and “wrapping it all up”.



Mr Carney was also invited to be one of the Covention’s guest panellists for the last session of the day, where he discussed various key topics in major event management along with Mr Joerg Foerster, EUSA Technical Commission Chair; Mr Besim Aliti, EUSA Sports Manager; Ms Ana Todoric, EUG2020 Sports Director; and Mr Liam Smith, EUSA Assistant Sports Manager, who acted as moderator.



EUSA would like to thank Mr Carney for his excellent contribution to the Convention, and we wish him all the best in the preperations for the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

The Convention was part of the knowledge sharing process within the Supporting Mobility and Good Practice Exchange in University Sport, supported by the European Union.