Kevin Cordina
The RFU Regulations require every club to provide appropriate medical cover for all of its adult and youth home games.
That does not mean that there must be 1 qualified medic in attendance by every pitch – a club is entitled to assess the position and decide that 1 medic can cover more than 1 game.
The issues that arise for our Society referees are :
- Should the referee ask each team whether medical cover is available and, if so, in what form?
- If the answer is that there is no medical cover for a particular game, should the referee refuse to allow the game to start.
Advice from the RFU is that The club is responsible for risk assessment and providing appropriate Pitch Side Care. There is no expectation on the referee to determine if pitch side care provided is either available or appropriate – that task falls squarely on the shoulders of the club. Insurance covers the referee regardless of the presence or absence of pitch side care provision.
As a matter of practice, our referees should always ask if there is a medic present. That allows the referee to brief the medic to come onto the pitch as soon as there is an injury and not to wait for a referee’s signal (on the basis that the referee will not necessarily stop the game for an injury, it all depends on the circumstances and where the injured player is is in relation to the direction of play).
However, we do not expect our referees to enquire into the medic’s qualifications and experience, as there is no way that most of the Society’s referees could possibly evaluate the answer.
We do not want to be in a position of being said to have ‘approved’ the medic.
