The stress of organising recreational sporting activities for enthusiasts of everything from tennis and tug o’ war to football and fencing is being red carded.

A new online networking service, Sportmeets, aims to remove the hassle and frustration experienced by volunteers who arrange sporting pursuits for students, groups and clubs.

Sportmeets will also provide a research facility to assist individuals in finding a sports group, engaged in their favourite activity, which they can join.

The website (http://sportmeets.com) will also provide a database of sports centres and clubs allowing them to list their sporting facilities and schedule of activities.

Sportmeets, the sporting version of internet – based social networking, is the brainchild of two Slovakian sports enthusiasts who met while studying at Glasgow University.

Peter Crkon and Miro Solanka play, coach and referee volleyball and have personal experience of the difficulties involved in organising games for ‘the crowd’.

“In a nutshell, Sportmeets is a web application for recreational sports players that shifts the effort from organizing events to participating in them, while also helping you find suitable people to play with and engage with them socially,” explains Peter.

He added: “Being keen volleyball players we know the problems of organising games when people call off the day before or don’t turn up and you spend stress filled hours looking for replacements and chasing people for money to pay the venue.”

“We decided something had to be done and started developing the idea that sporting should be fun for the organiser as well as the players. So as an organiser you can now enjoy some really nifty tools, like 2-way SMS and email RSVPing, debt tracking and online payments, attendance list updated in real time, and a state-of-the-art dashboard to manage all the groups you'll ever want.”

Sportmeets also provides engagement and competition. Players of individual sports, such as squash and tennis, can take part or even start their own ladder competitions.

Sportmeets users earn achievement badges to motivate themselves and to show off their sporting successes to their friends. And, of course, all scheduled events, results, or rankings can easily be shared on Facebook or Twitter.

The business venture is being supported by Wellness and Health Innovation (WHI), a national Scottish initiative to assist companies providing products, services and technology to promote healthy living.