Peter Brady
This is our formal policy in relation to pitch safety for referees to follow and for Match Official Developers to note.
Regulation 6.20 of the RFU Regulations sets out the requirement in the RFU leagues for a pre-match day inspection if possible by a referee who is independent of the home and away team. If that is not practical (as it seldom will be in the community game), then the decision has to be made on the day.
The starting point about pitches is that it is for the 2 teams to decide what to do.
If both teams want to play – a decision for captains in adult rugby and coaches in youth rugby – then the game goes ahead.
If one team says that the pitch is unsafe and declines to play, that is the end of the matter so far as the referee is concerned. If the other team thinks that the refusal was unreasonable, they can take that up with the competition’s organisers.
Under no circumstances should a referee or MOD attempt to persuade a team, particularly a youth team, to play or not.
There is however nothing to stop a referee offering an opinion, e.g. drawing the teams’ attention to particular parts of the pitch which may be frozen, waterlogged etc. However, the decision rests with the teams.
Deciding whether the pitch is safe is the responsibility of the captains or coaches. They bear the responsibility of ensuring their players’ safety, not the referee. As long as the match is refereed in a safe manner, any injury which results directly from the state of the pitch is not the referee’s concern.
This is subject to the overriding point that the Laws entitle the referee to abandon a game at any time after the kick off (even after a few seconds) if they decide that there is a serious safety issue.
This power is one to be used very sparingly and only in exceptional circumstances.
